Quiet Little Voices
by 11223
Summary: Oh, you know.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: Speed of Sound**

* * *

_I still live for sound_  
_But, lately all the people seem to talk too loud,_  
_And my feet are on the ground_  
_But, all the words I say are coming out like crowds._

The steady _stitch-stitch stitch-stitch stitch-stitch_ of my sneakers on the pavement. That noises repeated hundreds of times against the gray-lit morning hours of the city. There was peacefulness there, in a certain dauntingly melancholic way that made the desolate friction of the bottom of sneakers and pavement hollow and lonesome, and only moreso when carefully highlighted by the repeated crescendo and decrescendo of my breath. It was all gray. The steam of my gray breath in puffs, mingling with the shallow gray mist of morning, echoing in the gray static noise of my feet churning and my lungs heaving. The city itself rose up, grayer than normal, steal and reflecting glass windows of the cloudy sky. I followed my feet methodically towards its immensity.

I felt as if I hadn't opened my mouth to make a sound in years. That didn't bother me at all, though. I listened to my feet as I debated which set of realizations were worse in the long run of my mental stability. Today would never feel as good as this moment. This singular second with my throat burning from breathing in the frost that decided to settle in the air, the same frost that glistened just enough on windshields to let itself be known, the frost that chilled the bark from the trees so they looked like bristled cats amidst a wondrous stretch before an even more wondrous nap, that frost made my throat numb and tight and prickled. This individual second before I stopped running, before my thighs burned and each muscle fiber twitched merely out of repetition, rather than necessity, for just a few moments. This precise time, before the city shook its coat of dusty frost and breathed again, when roofs still had slow smokey gray plumes and streets weren't filled to capacity. This was my favorite moment because it made me so extremely sad and extremely scared for numerous reasons at the same time, and feeling like that was needed. That's what humanity feels at one point. Ironically, it would be when I stopped moving that the world would start turning and be filled with motion. A constant state of whirring and loud movement from here to there and back again while I stood transfixed in one place, or so it would feel. But now, the world was not moving at all. It was quiet, it was gray, it was chilly, and it was mine.

And so suddenly, yet completely expectedly, it was not mine anymore. That's how things work, most of the time, if you really think about it. But then thinking about something always changed it completely. I gulped in one fainting remnant of the morning on the porch before I went inside. That last breath nearly ruined the rest of it. The last of something is never as sweet as you'd like.

"Do you even sleep?" Dov grumbled from inside the fridge and he came back up with some orange juice.

"Yes," I informed him, kicking my shoes off on the mat. I stretched my arms above my head, pulling and reaching my shoulder joints.

"Not nearly enough," he worried half-heartedly. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles. He was stretched thin for unselfish reasons. But I was uninvolved in such things.

I showered and ticked off another day on the calendar in my room. Thirty-eight days. Thirty-eight gray mornings and slowly wearing away at my soles. Thirty-eight days of target practice and studying and vigilance. Forty-five days ago, Oliver was released from the hospital. Forty, Chloe woke up. Thirty-nine, I sat down and changed because that was all there was to do after the past year. I took stock of what had transpired and I decided, consciously, to be better and try. I inadvertently tried to distance myself from the fallible existence of my friends. They were flesh and blood and that could be killed and that was too much for me.

But today was the day, and that was all that mattered. Today I would take a brave new step for the Peck clan, or today I would once again bring shame to the very name. Thirty-eight days ago, I decided to figure out what I wanted, and I went for it, which in and of itself is terrifying. Thirty-eight days ago I decided I'd be more for my friends and myself, and that meant absolutely nothing. But oddly enough I'd found some happiness there.

"How does it feel?" Chris was all smiles in the rearview mirror. "I mean, this is a huge moment, right?"

"Yeah, I can't believe it," Dov let out an excited breath. "She gets to go home, and who knows what else."

"She could be back at work in a few months," Chris reminded him, patting his shoulder as the car was thrust into park.

I grabbed my bag and slung the familiar weight over my shoulder.

"I'm just glad she's still her," Dov acknowledged. He had struggled severely over the past month, and I was oddly relieved for him that Chloe was still Chloe. "It's all icing on the cake from here on out. I mean, I won't be applying for any promotions or anything, because I want to be there for her. But that will come."

"Yeah, man," Chris fell into step with him. "You and me, training officers next round. How awesome is that going to be?"

"We have to fuck with the recruits," Dov's head nodded.

"Definitely." They were plotting as we parted ways at the dressing rooms. I was frightful to open my mouth.

I changed as precisely as I could. I found that focusing on the most minute details made time slow down at times and quieted the ruckus that prevailed at all hours. Andy and Traci came and went with small pleasantries. I concentrated until the room was empty and the noise of life was merely a din in the background, growing from the hallway and stifled by the doorway. I sat on the bench in front of my locker and took a deep breath, missing the crispness of the morning. I found myself spacing out during conversations. I went through motions, and I was working on that. At first the motions were reassuring, and now I realized how much of a crutch they were.

"I didn't think you'd be here yet," a vaguely familiar voice seeped into the room, making my spine adjust accordingly. I turned to find her standing there, simply standing there, and recognized that the world was still. "I mean, I knew you'd be here, you're usually early, but I figured you wouldn't be in the locker room yet. You usually go to the range, on Tuesdays, right? Now I sound like a stalker. I'm not. You told me that, I think."

"Good morning," I stood, staring at her. We were both rooted on opposite sides of the room. "I ran longer than I expected this morning."

"Right, that would explain it," Holly paused and looked at me while she nodded. "I brought you breakfast. I was going to leave it, so this wouldn't happen..."

"What would happen?" We still hadn't moved. We were both quiet though and it was unnerving.

"I was just hoping to be sneaky," she switched tactics. "Here," she dug in her bag and slowly approached. "It's a banana muffin. I just wanted to say good luck, today."

"How did you know it was today?" I weighed and searched the pastry in my hand now.

"McNally mentioned it when she was by last week. She was nervous," Holly explained. Her hands moved slightly as she wrung them close to her body. "Then I ran into your friends at the Penny, and nearly everyone was talking about it. They were certain you didn't apply though. I didn't say anything. They said... Chris said you'd been reserved. That's none of my business." She stopped herself. I oddly enough, enjoyed her inability to speak without speaking at the same time.

"You're rooting for me to get it?" I smiled and kept looking at my hands.

"Goodness, no," she laughed slightly, nervously. "In a way, I guess I am. I know you want it."

"Thank you."

Another officer came in quickly, rummaged through their locker and slammed it shut. Holly and I stared at each other, almost stricken, both afraid and awkward at the same time. That was my fault, mostly. She was innately awkward, usually in a way that worked, but I hadn't made things easy for her. I'd made them simply for myself. I detached myself and I ran away, cruelly. I fell asleep talking to her on the phone occasionally, in weakness, because it made it easier for me. The officer bolted as they found what they were looking for in the room. The door smacked shut, echoing between our bodies.

"I, uh..." Holly started, swallowing when I looked back up at her. "You're alright, right?" she asked, waiting for me to nod. I did and stared at the muffin in my hand again. "I just wanted to say I'm here. I could ramble a million things, but that never works with you. I know things are complicated. That's all. And God that sounds so cliché and boring."

Holly gave me that face that was a mix of fear and misunderstanding, as if she was trying to figure me out, or figure out herself at the same time, but just couldn't grasp either or understand what it all meant. That was the worst, because there wasn't anything to figure out about me, and that fraudulent feeling my bones was everything I spent thirty-eight days running away from.

"Thank you," I finally gave her. I wish it could have been more, but that was all I had. She gave me that patent Holly smile and nod and quickly turned on her heel towards the door.

I stared at the muffin. It was simply a muffin, and that was all that I needed it to be. I hadn't seen her in thirty-seven days, at least not more than in passing. There is something different about someone when they are in person and not on the phone. On the phone at night they are dreaming and they are fantasy. In person they are flesh and bone and incredibly full of life that you start to confuse what you think about them. At night, Holly's voice was soft and oddly assured. She was not nerved, but rather calming.

"You know, I understand that you are a cat," Holly was touching the doorknob when I looked up at her.

She was gone a second later. I sat and ate my muffin before parade. It was not nearly the same quiet as before, and after Holly, I wasn't sure it could be. Maybe in another thirty-eight days.

The morning meeting passed without incident and in its normal, mundane form. I strove for silence. That was a form of power I think. It was a coping mechanism. To be quiet and to find solitude as peace was difficult.

The day followed in much the same way. Oliver talked and made me smile, and that was why I was quite sure he was one of my favorite people in the world. It was a short list, and I think that made it worse. We talked. I talked. We answered calls, and the anxious black pit in my stomach grew as the hours passed. I couldn't tell him about my muffin. I wouldn't tell him about my application. Instead, I spent my shift in a blissfully pretend haze of camaraderie and doing my job down to the most detailed detail. I didn't think about the gray morning and how far away it had been. Or the fact that my route was so long because I ran by Holly's apartment every other day for no reason. I didn't think of much of anything. But in doing that, I think I fell into the old trap of thinking too much until it was all repeating across my eyelids in every blink.

And that wasn't different.

"15-12, we have some suspicious noise heard at Beverly and Dundas, please respond," dispatch squawked as we drove back towards the station. I groaned. When a twelve hour day easily becomes thirteen, and somehow seventeen, it was easy to hate clocks.

"One more before bed?" Oliver looked over at me. I rolled my eyes.

"15-12, responding," I murmured into my shoulder.

"10-4."

We drove towards the scene in silence. Or perhaps it wasn't silence, but instead it was Oliver occasionally interjecting some observation or imparting some wisdom I couldn't index and file in my brain anymore.

We approached the front of the building slowly.

"Police," Oliver yelled. "Is there anyone here who shouldn't be?" We waited in silence, peering into the windows looking for anything out of place. The street was quiet. The street lights started to flicker their dull orange glow in the dusky street. It was a bad neighborhood, and that was reassuring in the bad way.

"Crackerjack work, partner," I kicked a can on the sidewalk after we got no answer or sign of life. The houses were unlit. No pedestrian traffic on the road. I tried to door, which was locked. The windows were dusted and showed signs of having been touched recently.

"There's no one here," he observed. "Must have been a passerby. Maybe even an owner." We holstered our flashlights and walked back towards the car. "In this neighborhood, people come and go and neighbors don't know."

"Dispatch this is 15-12, we have an all clear. Do you have an address of the caller?" I scanned as I spoke.

"Negative," my radio muttered. A scramble of noise in the alley a house over made our heads snap. Oliver nudged his head with his hand on his gun on his belt. I took a deep breath and followed in a similar way.

"Police," Oliver yelled again, flashing his light down the alley. We were rewarded with just a cat bolting from an upturned garbage can.

"Looks like we found the cat burglar," I put the clip over my gun again. Oliver turned back towards me as I leaned against the fence after giving a cursory glance behind the house.

"You know, sometimes I wonder about you, Peck," he laughed a fake laugh. "But then you slay me with your wit. How long have you held on to that one?"

"Since I was six," I followed once again towards our squad car. Another rustling noise made me pause and slow.

"I'm glad I could be here for it," Shaw continued down the alley. I spun around with my light again, noticing a dark figure. His stance was all that I needed to know.

"Oliver!" I turned to tackle him. That was instinct. I vaguely understood it in the fight or flight sense, but now I was acting it out in real life, and that was different as well. My fingers gripped his vest at the shoulders, pushing him into the fence as a sharp, piercing pain dug into my back. "Ahh!" I hit the ground with a thud that I felt throughout my bones. My chin cracked into the pavement and my fingers yanked themselves from Oliver's vest as he moved to see where the shots came from.

"Peck!" he righted himself and scrambled over my body. I couldn't feel my anything at the moment. My mouth was bloody and salty as I drank it in before spitting with a grasping breath that never quite got to where it needed to go. "Come on, Peck. Be okay. It's okay."

"15-12 we have shots fired and an officer hit," I heard him. I heard it all but I couldn't breathe. "I need a medic, now!"

"Go," I gritted my teeth, rolling over as best I could. I most likely looked like a flounder out of water. My arms didn't work. My mouth didn't either. I mumbled and spit out red words that were supposed to be "Male, six foot, black sweatshirt, hood." My teeth were cracking under my jaw tension. I somehow doubt my words made it out as well as I'd hoped. I didn't honestly care for the moment. My skull hurt.

"He's gone. Stop moving, Peck." My eyes were closed but I know his light was flashed down the alley. "Gail, listen to me," he held my cheek. "Don't move. I need to look. You're going to be okay. I promise."

"I'm fine," I tried to fight against him and right myself. I couldn't remember what normal breathing was. "It's just my vest." Blue and red lights lit up the street. Again I swallowed my words with a mouthful of what I imagine was blood and spit. He pushed my forehead down gently so I wouldn't fight. I stared bewilderedly into the bright light.

"Are you rookies all this fucking stupid!" he shouted, grabbing my vest. I'd never seen him like this. "I swear to God. That was mine... That was mine!"

"Aww," I gritted, shallow breaths limiting my capacity to speak. "You care, Oliver." He wiped at my mouth softly, hushing me. I tried to hold my back.

"Is she alright?" McNally arrived, bending over me in the dark. Her features were highlighted by the blue quite nicely.

"We need a medic to check," he started to lift me away from the alley towards the street. "Down the alley to the east. I'm sure he's long gone, but canvas the area."

"You're going to be fine," she looked back at me sternly before running after her partner. The disappeared into the dark alley. Oliver dragged me by the shoulders as best he could just as the medics arrived.

"Here, right here," he flagged the medics. "You're going to be fine, Peck." I felt him holding my hand. I saw him searching.

"I know, Shaw," I scolded as best I could as the medics moved me about, gingerly pulling my vest off to check my back. "Geeze, like you've never," I inhaled as they pressed on my body, "been shot at before."

"You're such a gentleman, Gail," he smiled.

"I try," I gave him a pained smile. "Can we stop?" I asked as they tried to put me on the board. "For fuck's sake." I pushed them away while holding Oliver's hand firmly. "Just give me a second."

"Ma'am, we need to make sure there's no bleeding," the medic tried to stop me. I glared.

"You don't want to tell her that," Oliver whispered. The medic started to speak and he just shook his head. "When you're ready, Peck." He stood, holding my hand, waiting for me to right myself. I took an inventory of my body before trying to move. It was about ten percent me, and ninety percent Oliver lifting me, but I painfully made it upright before doubling over and spitting fresh blood from my mouth.

"That's not good," he worried to the medic. "Fix that, will you?"

"Stop," I calmed him. "It's just my mouth. I'm fine." I took a deep breath and held it before making myself stand. "Look at that," I gestured. "Right as rain."

"We couldn't find anything, but we got a casing," Andy reappeared with Chris. "Gail, are you okay?"

"Never better," I ventured to take a breath, only because I had to, and definitely not because I wanted to.

"We will meet you at the hospital," Chris moved to help me stand but I shook my head and gave him a smile telling him it was alright.

"No, that's not necessary," I walked slowly towards the ambulance. I knelt to get my vest and regretted it, but swallowed that. "I'm fine you guys."

"Can you take the cruiser back?" Oliver got into the ambulance with me, throwing the keys to Chris.

"Yeah, of course."

"Don't let them come, Oliver," I laid down in the back.

"Peck says thank you, and she expects gifts," he shouted as they closed the doors.

The EMT gave me a series of tests and looked in my mouth. Oliver worried over every scratch, inventorying the damage. Much of the same happened once I made it to the hospital with tests and CT's and stitches in my mouth which explained the bleeding. Then came the questions about what happened. The hours marched forward and I was abstaining from painkillers as long as I could, but the paperwork of getting shot made me want to get shot again without a vest. All I wanted was for it to be quiet.

It suddenly struck me as weird that my job involved such varied daily activities. That was all I could mull while being prodded with questions and fingers and tongue depressors.

It wasn't until they cornered Oliver and made him leave my bedside for questions regarding the incident that I was given peace. The curtains were closed behind him as he left, promising to return as soon as he could and asking if I was alright again, then berating himself by telling me that of course I was because I was me. And when those curtains did close, the dull chatter that merged to one unified noise that can only be gray emerged and was as close to silence as I knew I'd be allowed. I watched my feet dangle over the edge of the bed and felt a shiver on my spine and against the forming bruise there in the coldness and sterility of the hospital. My shirts were taken as evidence, and I was left nearly naked with Oliver and doctors.

To make it worse, I had to speak and repeat myself so many times I wondered if that could ever be considered better than not speaking. It felt more painful in a way.

"Knock, knock," Sergeant Best peeked his head through the curtain. "How are you, Peck?"

"Alright, sir," I stood too quickly and held it in. I was conscious of my sports bra.

"Sit for goodness' sake," he helped me sit. "Officer Shaw told me what you did."

"It was routine, he came out of no where," I repeated. Those words were pointless. He tried to calm me.

"I just wanted to come and make sure you were alright," he tried to be modest and not look at me. I appreciated that. "And see if there was anyway we can get you to stay," he gave me a small smile. "Your instincts, your honor, your commitment is going to be missed."

"Why wouldn't I..." I was perplexed until I found the answer on the floor tile with the realization of what he meant. "I got in?!" I hopped up again, too eagerly. I felt the stitches in my mouth wiggle.

"While I am incredibly proud to inform you that you have been accepted to ETF training, I know we are going to miss you," he had a huge smile. "You deserve it, Peck." He held out his hand and I shook it wholeheartedly.

"Thank you, sir," I slurred. "Thank you so much."

"Now rest," he ordered. "You look like you've been shot." I nodded and watched the curtain open and close again.

The noise had disappeared with his words, and I sat on the bed with my arm wrapped about myself to hold the excitement in and the bruise from feeling anything at all. Thirty-eight days later, and I got what I wanted. And no one would ever hurt my friends again. I popped a painkiller finally.

"Gail?"

"Here," I hopped up again, this time easier with the affects of the pill.

"Oh my..." Holly threw open the curtain. "God. You were shot," she froze as the curtain closed behind her. "Are you..." her hands were framing my face, afraid to touch the swollen cheeks that inevitably developed. "Oh my goodness," she ran her hand along my forehead and pushed my hair away gently. I closed my eyes and let her hold my head a bit.

"I'm fine," I mumbled as her cool hands traced along my jaw. Her inventory was much nicer. "You should see the other guy," I opened my eyes to find hers filled with worry and fear and a lot more things I couldn't and wouldn't pinpoint under the influence. "That sidewalk won't mess with me again." I felt the numb, dopey smile on my mouth.

"Because you smashed your entire face into it," she observed, brows knit, fingers on the bridge of my nose and on my cheeks.

"Someone had to," I pointed out.

"Oh my God, Gail," she whispered to herself. I watched her gulp. She stood back only slightly to survey where I had been hit. Her fingers were on my back, tracing the rim of the growing bruise. I felt my skin prickle for new reasons and I shivered in the cold. "You were," she held up her fingers about four inches apart, "this far from being actually shot."

"I'd do it again," I swore. She stared at me hard, meeting my eyes.

"I know," she nodded. "Let's get you home, okay?" she took off her coat and gave it to me, zipping it to the chin gently. I agreed.

"I made ETF," I told her as she let me hold her arm for support.

"Congratulations," she gave me weakly. That felt like getting shot. "I knew you would."

"I want it to be quiet," I whispered, looking at the ground.

"Alright," she promised, holding my hand now. "We can do that."

* * *

**Chapter 2: A Little Hell**

* * *

_You said that I'd be fine,_  
_but first I wore you with hurts._  
_It takes a little hell _  
_to know what heaven is worth-_  
_That some other time_  
_You gotta lose what's right_  
_'for you to know_  
_what's really worth the fight._

When I woke, I was not afraid. I had not dreamed, and I felt as if I had not lived. Instead I was thoughtless and oddly calm as facts slowly waddled their way back to me. Maybe I was in shock. They sedated me when I was abducted, but somehow I felt all of that through the drugs. Here, I didn't.

The sheets were not mine. The room was different, and I could tell just by the portion I saw with one eye open and without lifting my head. I inhaled the bed deeply and realized it was not mine either, which made sense. None of it was threatening. The ache in my body distracted me from any other feelings. The groggy haze of the painkillers wrapped me up in a lethargic apathy that was strangely addicting.

Slowly, I pulled myself up and worked my jaw, running my hand along my chin and feeling a nice missing patch of skin. There was a dull throbbing in my back when I moved my muscles in certain ways. Quietly, I slipped my legs out from the blankets and let them languidly hang over the side. I rolled my neck and shoulders, accounting for each muscle group. My fingers dug into the side of the mattress and I looked at the streaks of sun that sifted through the curtains. It was early and the sun was merely thinking of rising. The dull, pallid morning light merely negated some of the dark of the night, not overpowering, not reckoning, simply existing. It was my time of day. Anything can happen at dawn. There is the wide expanse of the day before you. Yesterday I got shot. Somehow today would be different in no more or no less of a debilitating or exciting way, but it would simply be the most I would feel because the past was forgotten and the future was unimaginable.

I flopped back on my back and regretted it, but instead of changing, I just laid there and stared at the ceiling, contemplating mortality and such. I'd been shot at, and that was something in and of itself. One day ago, I'd been shot. I honestly wasn't sure how it made me felt, because they don't teach that sort of thing. It made me scared, but not in a constructive way. It made me recognize how easy it would be to give my life. Not to have it taken, but to give it. Without that fear, was I better or more suited for work? Was this all just a reaction to that psycho abduction earlier in the year? God, even worse I worried about having more shrink time.

Laying there, though, I understood that things were different today than they had been thirty-six days ago. When I felt like a fish that'd been yanked out of the ocean, when my lungs were wavering and I couldn't breathe, I thought about Holly.

You can't run away from facts like that. And that made things different, whether I knew how to proceed or not, they simply were. You don't have to acknowledge that things are different for them to be. In fact, it's pretending that they aren't that is deadly. Look at the past thirty-seven days. Holly kissed me, or I kissed her, who knows anymore or for how long, or where or when exactly, and then I ran and then I get shot as punishment, or something. The thoughts stuck heavy to my bones and made them even creakier.

I groaned slowly and shook my head as I raised myself and stood on slightly wobbly legs.

It was easier not to think of such things. Analyzation of actions was itself an act of history, and that was concerned with a past that mattered little to me. Not thinking had its form of peacefulness innately rooted there. It was not denial and it was not avoidance or un-acknowledgement, but simply a way of not overanalyzing.

To no avail, I searched for my shirt only to remember I travelled in Holly's coat. I still had my pants on, though my belt was beside the bed on a small nighstand. I grabbed at it eagerly, realizing my gun was no where in sight. I panicked for a moment before remembering it was taken as evidence as well. Regaining my heartbeat, I ventured a few peaks at the nightstand, fanning out old forensic journals and a few novels.

The room was clean, so I made the bed as best I could, as slow going as it was. It was also sparsely decorated, which I appreciated, though I wasn't sure what it meant. I allowed myself quick peaks in the lone dresser only to find an old white undershirt to put on, which in and of itself was an event. My arms, lifted above my head felt new and foreign.

Gradually, I finally opened the door and calmly walked into the living room. The dingy, cloudy morning appeared in two large windows that seemed to infinitely construct the wall. Bookshelves were filled to the brim, and photos made themselves known in pretty frames. I didn't look into them because that felt oddly intimate and intrusive.

The apartment was vaguely quiet, so instead I followed the light into the kitchen.

At the counter sat Holly, and that wasn't so much of a surprise as it was kind of just a nice fact. She had a rather large and rigorously worn sweatshirt eclipsing her hands. One wound itself around a mug while the other fingered the page of whatever she'd been reading. I didn't make a sound. Instead I watched her push her glasses slightly and take a sip from her mug after gingerly blowing on it. I wasn't sure what it all meant. She was pretty, that was easily perceived. She was smart, too. She had weird habits and did things how she felt, didn't let me sass her, and more than anything it was incredibly easy to simply be, around her. Those facts were a lot to think about, so instead I just reminded myself that I was happy that she existed in the world and I could leave it at that. Anything else aroused implications I was incapable of understanding. Even if she was beautiful.

"Good morning," I cleared my throat to make myself known after diluting my brain with the jumble she seemed to constantly induce.

"Oh, hi!" she looked up quickly, and I knew I had startled her. "Are you alright? Can I get you anything? You should still be in bed, resting."

"Water?" I asked, taking a stool beside her. She was up as soon as I sat down, opening a cabinet to find a glass and filling it quickly before handing it to me. I drank it despite the dull ache in my lower ribs with each swallow. I tried not to cringe when I moved. I didn't want her to see that.

"How did you sleep? It's early, you can rest still," she leaned against the counter opposite of me.

"I borrowed your shirt," I answered.

"Oh yeah, of course," she nodded. "I hadn't thought." She stared at me and I didn't think about how pretty she was again. It was easy not to think of that stuff when we were on the phone. Except for her voice. That would knock me down all of the time in its own way. "Stay there," she finally looked away. "I have some stuff for your face. I'll get you some ice for your back, would you like another painkiller?" She was already scurrying about the kitchen, digging in a bag for something. "You should eat something. I will get you some breakfast and coffee. I have fruit. I have eggs, I think. Actually I'm not sure," she was gathering still, haphazardly, checking cabinets and the refrigerator while she did. "No, forget that. I have toast. I think. I could make you something."

"No, please no," I shook my head. "I have to head in to work."

"You don't get the day off after being shot?" she paused, standing in front of me with fresh gauze and ointment in her hands. Her hair was messy and she looked insanely comfortable. "Your phone has been ringing off the hook. I told the names I recognized that you were fine and sleeping it off, no worse for wear."

"You kept it quiet," I smiled. She tilted my head to appraise my chin and jaw.

"How're your stitches?" I stuck my tongue out. She made a face. "I can't help you with that. But it looks good. Nice tongue you got there." She blushed before taking a wet rag and gently starting to wash at my chin. I watched her work her lip between her teeth. "This is just to keep it from getting infected." I felt the cool lotion on my chin and realized just how big of a chunk I'd taken off. "I'll put some on your other scratches, but they aren't as deep. I guess I'm sort of ruining the point of the quiet, huh? The one thing you asked for," she applied a bandage as best she could. "And I just can't stop, really, because you were shot, and you called me. It's all quite horrible."

"I'm okay," I reminded her. "We wear vests for a reason. I'm fine."

She gave me a stern look and surveyed her handiwork. She capped the tube and washed her hands without another word, all the while moving about the kitchen while I sat there, still as could be. I watched her pour ice cubes into a towel and wrap it up for me.

"I'm not okay," she finally said quietly. "I got a phone call that you'd been shot. Out of no where. Do you know what that's like?" And that right there broke my heart.

"Yes," I reminded her. She nodded and shook it all from her head.

"I was running calculations on bullet density, and then I picked up my phone and somehow made it to the hospital. I can't remember the in-between, no matter how hard I think about it," she wrung the towel in her hands. "I was worried, you... you jerk," she pushed me a little. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that," she shook her head again, messy bun wobbling weakly behind her head. It made me smile. "No, you're a jerk," she pushed me again. "Getting shot and junk."

"I'm sorry," I swallowed.

"You're not a jerk," she relented, fidgeting. It took me a moment to break her gaze, which inadvertently triggered her hands on the hem of my shirt. I gulped. "Here, this will be cold," she pressed the ice on my bruise. "Keep that on for a bit. I should get ready for work. I can take you in, if you'd like."

"I don't have clothes," I shivered under the cold,

"I can find you some sweats if that's alright. You don't want to constrict the blood flow if your hips right now with belts or tight jeans," she explained.

"Yeah, thanks," I nodded.

After an exchange of glances that both seemed to want to ask each other a million different, and most likely ore difficult questions, we looked away and moved about each other like orbiting bodies, never coming too close, never speaking what wasn't needed. I showered and changed and Holly made herself ready while I stared out the window as my part of the day burned itself off and the sun rose once again. And the magic was gone.

"I can't thank you enough," I finally was able to find words as we neared the station. "I know this has been horrible, and I've been a jerk."

"Okay, that was said in the heat of the moment," she corrected me, surveying the street as we stopped at a light. "Getting shot doesn't make you a jerk."

"But I think treating you like I have been is jerk-ish," I murmured weakly. I looked straight ahead and not at her because that would be difficult.

"Yeah, definitely. You are pretty much a jerk," she shrugged in agreement, giving me a smile. She understood. That didn't make it easier.

"I have a lot to figure out, and I don't like doing that," I explained. "I'm working on it. It's been an exhausting few months."

We drove in quiet for the last few blocks as we had for the first few. I was still groggy and unable to account for where all those words came from inside of my mouth. But she deserved things, regardless of if I was comfortable or not. She let me sleep in her comfortable bed and she shared her clothes and she offered to make me breakfast and she dressed my scrapes and she drove me to work and she worried herself sick when she got the phone call. Shoe on the other foot, and I would have been out of my mind if it'd been her, and I wasn't sure what that actually meant.

"Oliver told me that if you hadn't tackled him, it would have been his head," Holly spoke after we sat in the quiet that came after parking the car. "And I understand. You've busted your ass to get this new assignment and it is a job where you don't need distractions. I get all of that. But I can be motivated, too. And I can know what I want, too, and I'm patient."

I very much wanted to be anywhere but here at that moment. But I didn't want to be anywhere else. She was saying things because she was afraid and worried when I was shot, and it was reaction out of shock. That made sense.

"Alright," I nodded, swallowing thickly. I felt as if I had cottonballs in my mouth. "Thank you, again," I reminded her. We got out of the car and I was terrified suddenly of never having any of that again. It felt as if I'd missed the moment and I was too locked away to have it again. But the sun had risen, as it's known to do.

"It's no problem," she promised.

I walked away and into the station before I had to tell her anything else. Who knew what would come out of my mouth if given half the chance. I strangled silence and kept it prisoner for myself. She was walking to the other side of the building, she was underground and far away and I could do my paperwork in peace and I could go home and go to sleep and wake up very early and run by her house and pretend not to know she lived there.

"What are you doing here, Peck?" Oliver sat beside me while I sat in parade before the rush of people. I hadn't realized my feet brought me here. I was technically on medical leave, but I had paperwork, so I found myself pulled into the normal routine.

"I, uh..." I swallowed and looked around, lost. "I just came in to sign some of the paperwork."

"That can wait, darlin'," he promised, gently rubbing my shoulder. "You should be resting. How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," I repeated again. I felt tears on my cheeks before I realized my eyes were soppy and smudged. "I'm fine," I repeated.

Oliver wrapped his arm around me and I was done.

"I know you are," he assured me. He rubbed over the bruise on my back, but I didn't care. I sobbed into his uniform. "I actually believe that you are fine," he swore. "You're the most fine out of all of us, and it amazes me. You're like this pain in the ass, titanium spine here for everyone."

"I don't know what to do," I sniffled, wiping myself on his shirt. I tried to calm down. I didn't do this.

"Well, you don't get shot anymore," he informed me, lifting my head. He had that goofy smile. "And you just, well you do more of this," he wiped my tears with his thumbs, avoiding the scratches and cuts and bruises. "You feel more. You let yourself feel more. Or else, what's the point of taking a bullet for someone else, right? It's not weakness to have others who care about you."

"The currier wasn't even sick, Oliver," I hung my head and tried to catch my breath.

"Ok. What?" I lost him.

"I had a really nice morning this morning," I explained. "Do you ever feel that being a cop just messes you up?"

"Every day," he nodded. I finished wiping at my face and laughed slightly, weakly. "Who isn't a little messed up, right? I mean, could you imagine working in a bank? Counting all day? That would drive me crazy. Or could you sell cars? All day, just numbers and making people buy cars they can't afford. All jobs crush your soul."

"But not this one," I reminded him.

"No," he smiled thoughtfully. "For every soul-crushing day, like yesterday, I have a few good ones along the way that make it worth it, I suppose."

"Thank you, Oliver," I gave him a smile. "For this. I think it's the painkillers"

"Hey, thanks for not letting me get shot in the head," he returned. "Clearly we're even."

"Clearly," I rested my head on his shoulder. It was quiet, for just a moment. I could see bodies moving about outside, behind the blinds, but here, it was quiet, for the moment, and this was a moment you lived for, I think.

"Peck, what are you doing here?" Traci hugged me before I could stand up. I winced again, but grew used to it.

"Paperwork," Oliver offered for me.

"That can wait," she scolded me, tilting my head this way and that to see my bruised chin. "You should be high as a kite in bed."

"Gotta look tough," I smiled.

Others filtered in and eventually I'd had the same conversation about seven or eight times before Staff Sergeant came in to begin the messages of the day. I was lost, again. But I somehow felt relieved, and I couldn't recall the last time I'd cried. Possibly forty-five days ago. That seemed about right. I wasn't sure why I cried. I think it was more than not knowing what to do. I think it was a fear of knowing exactly that.

"Now as everyone knows, in just a few weeks, Sergeant Wills with ETF will be retiring, and an opening was made available for one recruit from all of the districts."

I'd forgotten this part. This part was null and void, it felt. I'd accepted it and I forgot. That's what happens. You strive for something, then you get it and you don't know what to do with yourself.

"While I'm deeply honored to say that this recruit not only comes from this division, but is our very own leading pass-rusher, Gail Peck," he gestured towards me and clapped. The room was predominantly quiet though, and for once I didn't appreciate it at all. Slowly and half-enthusiastically people joined. I felt Nash's eyes. I felt Oliver boring rivets into my skull. Chris and Nick stood slack-jawed. "Enjoy her while we got her, people, because she will be transferring by next month. Now get out there and clean up the streets or something. Peck, you're off duty. Paperwork then home."

"Yes, sir," I nodded, staring at the desk.

Quickly, before anyone could ask me questions, I joined the mob and found an office until everyone cleared out and I could sign my name, answer the questions, and get my gear back.

But instead I sat in the office and stared out the window. I laid on the couch and I took a nap. I watched the day pass and I took a piece of paper and a pencil and I started on the next thirty-eight days. I filled pages and pages and everything that wasn't what I was supposed to be working on. I filled it with the same sorts of broken down goals and methods to which I applied myself in the getting of the assignment to ETF. Where before it had been tactical, I planned my runs, I planned my boxing and defense classes, I booked the range, I set days for studying. Now, I worked on who I wanted to mentally be, and that was more exhausting than setting a workout plan. It was more daunting and heavier than going after a new job. It reminded me how lacking I was, and led me to wonder how much we are able to change in the first place.

The need for it came from everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours; hell, in the past twenty-four months. The need came because Oliver reminded me that things are not easy, and they are never as hard as you'd really think.

It wasn't until my hands were numb and I realized I needed to change the bandage on my chin that I realized it was nearly sundown.

I calmly walked through the station and piled the papers in my locker before walking right out without so much as anyone saying one word to me. That was luck as much as it was skill.

I started walking. Perhaps that was the reason they mandated shrink visits, sometimes. When you draw a weapon as much as we do on a daily basis, it is kind of alarming what it will do to your psyche. My feet kept moving in the familiar and slowed pattern they were accustomed. I followed. My back ached and my head was one collective throb, but I kept walking. I felt weightless, though at times, because I cried and I planned and now I was ready. I wasn't ready, but now I at least figured out who I wanted to be. Things can fall into place when you figure out the type of person you want to be in the world.

When I found myself at her door, I ached from my toes to my scalp, but I let my knuckled rapt on the thick wood anyway. I stood straight, and I stood firm, despite it all. Until the locks moved and I felt the knee-jerk need to run. I took a deep breath.

"Hi," I started.

"Hi," she returned, quite bewildered. "What are you-? How did you-?"

"Thirty-eight days ago I sat down and I wrote a plan so I could figure out what I wanted and how to get it," I started. "It specifically said to stay away from you. It specifically said to stay away from everyone, because I am the person who got abducted, and I was the person who got shot, and next month, I'll be the person who plays with bombs and gets shot at with even bigger guns. And it's easier, to do those things without caring."

"Gail, what's-" Holly leaned against her door. She had her comfy big sweater on and I wanted to hug her quite badly at the moment.

"But none of that matters, you know?" I ignored her. "For the past ten hours I've been sitting down, writing a plan so I can figure out who I want to be. And it's convoluted. Maybe I'm convoluted. Maybe I'll never be sure. Maybe we can't know anything like that. But I know that this is the most I've spoken in six weeks. And I know that when I couldn't breathe last night I wondered where you were. And I know that you are very kind and I feel very much like who I am supposed to be around you."

We stared at each other, and I felt as if it was coming out wrong. I wanted to curl up and never get out of the fetal position, but I was in this moment, now.

"Today, Oliver told me that we're supposed to feel things," I tried to explain. "It only struck me when I realized I don't... I don't do that. And he said that was what made it all worth it. I realize how mental this all sounds, too late. But that's all I-"

Holly's lips were on mine. I registered that. She was quick. I felt her hand in my hair and her other on my shoulder, holding, as if I'd run. I froze. But I felt her lips, and that helped. I felt like I'd taken another four pain killers. She was soft and she was reassuring and she was possessive. Only when she stopped for an indeterminable amount of time did I realize she was looking at me, and I opened my eyes and shut my mouth. The daze was not mitigated, but still whirring about my cerebrum.

"Thirty-eight seconds ago, I decided to kiss you," she whispered. "And that's all you have to do, sometimes," she explained.

"That would have saved me an entire day of losing my mind," I tried to scold her.

"You're a stubborn learner anyway."

We hadn't moved. My arms were crossed in front of me, between us, and her hands were still upon me in wondrous ways.

"Would you like to come in?" she pulled away finally.

Holly didn't wait for an answer, but slowly grabbed my hands and led me inside. And that was wise on her part.

* * *

**Chapter 3: Acts of Man**

* * *

**Let me know what you think!**

* * *

_I am just like all the rest of them-  
Sorry, selfish, trying to improve.  
I'm here, I'm here, not heroic but I try._

"Why would I go, Chris?" I adjusted my earplugs, put the safety on my weapon and took out another mag. "No one thinks I deserve it anyway."

"That's not true," he said from behind me. His naivety was my favorite part about him. His optimism probably second to that, but also his most annoying as well.

"It's kind of true," Dov shrugged when I turned to look at them. "But why should that matter? If I had your connections, I'd have Frank's job by now." I glared at him, then followed the line of spectators. Andy looked at the ground. Traci shook her head in disagreement.

"It's not that we don't think you deserve it," Andy spoke up. "It's just a surprise. We didn't know you were applying. And you beat out over a hundred applicants." That was the nice way of saying she didn't believe I deserved it.

"Yourself included," I turned back towards the range, pushed the button and brought the paper back towards me. "You really don't think I earned it on my own merit. Well, here," I handed them the dummy sheet and a marker. "Each of you, draw an X anywhere, I won't look. Diaz, rack it up when you're ready."

"Gail, I know your mom didn't help you," Traci promised. Everyone else drew. "Look at what I had to deal with when I made detective. No one thinks you don't deserve it. You don't have to prove it. You already have the job."

"But you all do, and you're supposed to be my friends, and instead you're idiots, because I'm doing it for you," I sighed cockily. None if it would matter to me, I decided. "What, because I wasn't undercover, or because I haven't shot anyone, I don't have a proper resumé? Because I'm a Peck, I'm supposed to sit back and wait to inherit my mom's job? Or I'm supposed to follow my brother? I don't want to do that. I want to do this because it's the only place my name doesn't matter in the whole force, and I think I'd be good at it."

"I just..." Chris started. "I don't know. I don't want you to get hurt."

Chris pressed the button and sent the paper flying to the end of the range. They all looked guilty. But I was Gail, and I didn't have feelings, I think they thought that. They thought all of those things were destined for me. Worse yet, they thought I would just let something fall into my lap.

"Maybe instead of focusing on all of the things that didn't matter, you all should have been down here every evening, and taking the classes," I put in my ear plugs and cleared the entire clip quickly, placed my gun down, took off my ear plugs, and pushed the button once again. "Whether you think I used my name or not," I handed them the paper with their X's all shot out. "Eventually, I'll be the one you follow into a building, and I'll be the one on top of a bomb for you. My first thought when I heard about it was that I was the only person I trusted to keep you all safe. I guess it was a momentary lapse in judgement, because my friends, would have been happy for me, or even if they weren't they would have at least respected me enough to believe I didn't ask my mommy to get me a new job."

With that I left them holding the paper and I walked towards the stairs.

"Hey, how did you do this?" Chris shouted.

"Practice," I hollered as the door slowly swung shut behind me.

I felt relieved to finally have been honest. Instead of replaying it and feeling anger, I felt that elusive peace and resolve while I showered and put on my uniform for the last time. I said what I wanted to say, and I felt like I earned it even more in that moment. I'd let it slide, all of the soft remarks made over the past month. I understood genuine happiness and I understood putting on airs. Something in me just wouldn't let me stay angry. I'd said what I'd been bottling, and now they could think what they wanted, because they couldn't take it away from me.

"Peck, you're with me today," Oliver grabbed me as I exited an awfully quiet and boring parade.

"I'm in booking," I informed him, continuing down the hall towards my day.

"Not anymore," he stood in the middle of the hall, waiting for me. "Let's go, come on."

Begrudgingly I followed him to our car for the day. I had anticipated a day of quiet at the desk, filling out paperwork and moving smelly drunks from cell to cell, and releasing people who could afford lawyers. Instead I would be subjected to a day of monotonous patrol.

But the day progressed, as it is known to do, and it was actually quite nice. The weather was unseasonable sunny, though still crisp and full of incoming fall. Oliver was especially kind and funny, but I figured it was preemptive nostalgia that made it seem so fun. We gave out speeding tickets and dismantled a fight in the park before lunch and spent that on a bench eating hot dogs. And as the end of the day rolled closer, I cringed with each call over the radio. I wanted to be done, I wanted to turn in my gear, and I wanted to walk to Holly's where there would be a delicious dinner waiting to celebrate my last day. And she would make me laugh and talk about things I didn't understand, and we would watch the hockey game, because I promised, even though it was incredibly boring, and I would try to make out with her. I was a simple person, and that was all that I wanted.

"You know you're the first person in our division to go ETF in over twenty years?" Oliver asked as we followed the slow commute of evening traffic through downtown. I hadn't know that, so I shook my head. "Every few years I have rookies come, and they go, not making a sound. But your group, they just... They really flipped the script on us. It's been hard."

"Oliver, I didn't get this because of my name, did I?" I ventured as he paused and concentrated on driving.

"God no," he laughed. "I think you got it in spite of it. Your mom didn't tell you?"

"I try not to talk to her too often," I shrugged. He was still laughing to himself.

"So when we call for applications, senior officers at 15 compose a panel, and we weed out our top few nominations, and only those ever even make it to EFT selection board," he explained, turning down another street. "We were all a bit surprised by your scores on the physical and instinct exam, then your gun and mental scores came in, and we all wrote recommendations to attach and send in. Your mom, when she found out, tore into Frank so hard, I thought he'd be working booking for the rest of his career."

"Wow," I sighed to myself. That seemed accurate.

"Peck, don't worry. You deserve it," he assured me, still chuckling. "When you all come in, we can pinpoint where you will be in five years. You know, it's like a long running gamble," he explained, checking both ways at a four way stop. "Nash was going to be a detective, not because of Jerry, but because she came in and wanted it. We all called that one. I have money on Diaz being a beat cop. Dov is in the air, but I'm sure he won't be far from Diaz. And McNally will probably go Guns and Gangs. We couldn't figure out where you would end up, though. Then this came up, and it just made sense to everyone."

"I am going to miss working with you, Oliver," I realized out loud.

"I'm sure you'll be around," he promised. "Maybe you can rescue me from another kidnapper," he laughed even more.

"Fingers crossed, right?" I joined him with a small smile.

We pulled into the station without further incident, and I was grateful for that. Things were looking up, and for the past thirty-eight days, I'd actually consider myself as a happy person, or at least trying to be. Even today, I had been very much me, and in that, I had been truthful and just happy. Maybe there was a kind of peace in that. I wasn't sure.

"I'll write up our day," Oliver offered. "See you at the Penny?"

"I think I'm just going to head home," I lied. It wasn't a lie so much as a half-truth. I wasn't going home. I was going over Holly's, but I also wasn't going to the Penny.

"Nash and McNally are making this huge hullabaloo about a congratulatory party!" he explained, confused. "You have to go."

"Honestly, I really don't feel like it," I explained. "Maybe you should tell them the story about my mom," I offered.

"Um, okay?" he stared at me again. "Peck, I know this isn't goodbye, but I'm going to miss you, and if you ever need anything," he trailed off and nodded to keep himself from crying I suspected.

"I know," I gave him a hug. "Me too, Oliver. Raincheck on that drink, okay?"

"Definitely," he agreed and sauntered inside. I took one final look in the car before I followed.

Methodically I took off my uniform and changed, hanging it and making it ready to return. I put my name tag in my pocket after ripping it off slowly. It all felt melancholy and wonderful at the same time. My locker had been emptied slowly over the past few weeks. I found four old packs of gum. That was about it, honestly. I guess it should have been depressing, that my locker showed nothing of myself except that I liked to chew gum, or rather that I was incapable of completing a whole pack. But things felt different, and they had since that night thirty-eight days ago when I wrote down my new plan, and promptly told Holly. And she kissed me, which sort of changed everything again, you know?

I showed reverence to my locker though, and I showed reverence towards the job I did for the past four years and everything that came with it. Because even though I'd told off my friends, they still were just that, deep down. And I sat there showing some respect for everything I'd seen and everything I'd done. Reverence is often too much overlooked, because just sitting somewhere quietly is damn near impossible for most people.

"Hey," her voice made me jump from my nostalgic reminiscing on the bench in front of my locker.

"Hey," I returned. "I thought I was meeting you at yours for dinner."

"I actually just got a call," Holly spoke as she walked towards me. I liked when she did that, the whole walking thing. She did it really well. Her hands were in her pockets and she had an ease which only made me feel ease-ier. "Something about a party in your honor at the Penny."

"Ugghhh," I groaned and flopped back down. "I was hoping on ditching it."

"Why?" she stood square in front of me. I could have touched her hips if I'd wanted. And I did want to, but I didn't because I wasn't sure I knew how. But I really wanted to. "Free drinks all night?"

"The game is on," I reminded her. She burst out in a laugh.

"You really must not want to go if you're citing hockey as a reason to go back to mine," she laughed. Slowly, as if she were approaching a feral kitten, she tucked a small bit of hair behind my ears and let her fingertips trace my jaw until she held my chin between her fingers. "We don't have to, if you don't want, but free drinks." She had a mischievous smile.

"They all hate me," I shrugged. "Might as well as take their free drinks."

"That's the spirit," she cheered, pulling me up to follow.

I left my locker open and empty. I left my uniform hung on a hanger with the extras beside it. And I walked out of the station with simply my name and four packs of gum in my pocket, and Holly.

The evening had descended, swiftly and with a chill that was almost tangible in the air.

"I don't think they hate you," she finally started as we walked along the block towards the bar. "They're your friends."

"I think I haven't been a great friend to them, I guess," I acknowledged. "I tried," I shrugged.

"It doesn't matter," she decided, linking her arm with mine. In the cool evening it felt nice. "They're still your friends, and if all else fails, I promise to think of an excuse to get out of there."

"And then we can watch the game," I offered.

"Sure," she agreed as she opened the door. "Since you're such an avid fan suddenly." I just smiled at her and didn't tell her that the avid part came about so suddenly because it was an excuse to not be home, and to spend time at her place. And I liked it because she would talk in that voice that was just wonderful, and that made my ears feel like they weren't on constant alert. I just smiled at her.

A loud cheer erupted as I made my way inside, and I cannot say it didn't feel a little bit good. Before I knew it a drink was in my hand, and I had been hugged and cheered and given more and more drinks in addition to the one I was carrying. And then I drank it and another got there. All on the way to simply sit at the bar, and over the course of maybe two minutes I had more shots than I'd care to admit.

By the time the whirlwind subsided in its own way, I was on a stool and I heard Holly laughing beside me. And that was quite nice. Sometimes, you just have to ride the wave, hold on for dear life, and see where you end up after the wipeout. That's where I was right now.

"So I had a talk with Oliver," McNally pulled up the seat on my other side as someone else left. "And I, I mean, we all, owe you a huge apology, Gail."

"Yeah?" I raised my eyebrows and bit at the straw of my drink while I drank.

"I haven't been the best person," she nodded to herself. "To you. I, I thought this was payback, for Nick. I don't know. Things have just sucked."

"Yeah," I agreed. She finally looked at me.

"I still consider you a friend," she handed me another drink and grabbed her own after gesturing to the bartender.

"Were we ever?" I asked, suddenly. "I mean it. Were we ever friends?"

"I always thought so," she gave me a small, hopeful smile. "Just take care of yourself, out there, alright?" She looked disheartened and pulled herself off of the stool. "I know that each of us here tonight would be heartbroken if anything happened to you. Myself included."

"Hey, McNally," I stood to make her stop walking away. "Do you honestly think anything could hurt me? I'm indestructible." I flexed and held a god-like pose for her to marvel in my specimen. Andy smiled at me and laughed, holding up her drink and offering me a cheer. She hugged me a second later, and that was foreign, but I understood that this is what friends did sometimes. "Take care of yourself, until I get there."

"Of course," she agreed.

I finished my other drink and turned to find Holly talking with a few other officers. I'd been there about an hour, I'd drank my fill, and I wanted to leave because eventually it would sink in that I wouldn't be working with these people anymore, and that might be difficult. And I'd possibly remember my conversation with Andy, and I'd remember that it was possible to have friends.

"Can we..." I leaned over towards Holly, attempting to be as discreet as possible, but inevitably failing with the disproportionate amount of alcohol inside of me at that moment.

"We've only been here just over an hour," she turned to me and gave me a breathless laugh. I very much wanted to kiss her.

"I think I drank enough for the whole night," I promised. I hoped my face didn't feel as lopsided and smiley as I think it did.

"Alright," she leaned towards me, looked over her shoulder, looked over her other, looked over mine, conspiratorially. "You sneak out first, and I'll watch from here to make sure you make it, and then I will follow, okay?"

"Why do I have to go first?" I whispered, leaning into her.

"Because it's your party and you're more likely to get stopped," she explained, "now go."

As the words came out of her mouth, she was shoving me gently and looking around quite guiltily. She was anything but inconspicuous. She gave me an eager face and nudged me forward. Slowly I pushed through the crowd. She was right, naturally. I'd been caught about ten times with well wishes to which I had to keep gracelessly moving away from and towards the door. When I finally pushed open the door, the rush of cold air was beyond welcomed. I gasped it in and leaned against the wall, pushing my hair slightly and feeling the tingle of the whiskey in my legs, behind my knees, in my chest, warm against the cold, and most certainly in my head, like someone poured soda water in my brain.

"We made it," Holly came puffing out a second later. She rested against the wall as I was. "Impressive covert skills, Peck."

"Clearly I learned from the best," I laughed. "I guess that wasn't so bad."

"Because free drinks," she reminded me.

And so I kissed her. I grabbed her face and I kissed her, because she was leaning against the wall, and her breath was turning into fog when she breathed and I had wanted to do it for a long time. I felt her hesitate. I pulled away slightly because I was acting impulsively and that was unfair. Her fingers hooked in my belt loops and pulled me back. I sandwiched her on the wall. I kissed her until her glasses were fogged, and when we had to stop, I took them off and wiped them for her before placing them back and taking a step away from her, though her fingers remained in my belt loops.

That was how you lived. That moment was the reason people died, and it was alright. You die for moments like that.

"Holy moley," she sighed. I watched her swallow and was oddly proud of myself. It was a whiskey induced pride, but pride nonetheless. "We should get you a cab, right? Right," she decided, letting her fingers slip back to her own pockets.

"Let's go to yours," I stopped her. "It's closer."

I watched her debate. Her lip was mercilessly torn apart by her teeth, gnawed in fear and curiousness. She stared at me, so I stepped closer to her again.

"Okay," she relented. I smiled uncontrollably as I took her hand and pulled her in the direction of her apartment. She held me back tightly.

"That was fun," I nodded to keep warm as we waited at an intersection.

"The bar or the outside?" she asked innocently.

"Definitely the deciding to leave," I gave her a smile.

There were times when I would peek at her that I was certain she wanted to say things. But she would smile that fucking smile, and I would forget what I was thinking. Tonight was the first night of the rest of my life. I once heard that people act differently when they know somethings about to end. During most natural disasters police are called in, not to help, but to deter looters. When there is nothing left to lose, when someone is going somewhere new, when circumstances change and you get to choose who you want to be, whether it be a new school, a new hobby, a new friend, a new job... you get to reinvent yourself a little more true to the image of yourself in your head. And that power made people do things. It gave them that urge, it gave them the final nudge when they were teetering for the past thirty-eight days.

"I think we missed the game," Holly muttered as she struggled with her keys in the door.

"Nuts," I pretended to be bothered.

"So you only watch hockey to hang out with me?" Holly held her door open for me to pass.

"Something like that," I agreed, awkwardly standing in the middle of her living room. I watched her close the door, turn the lock and latch the chain. It was a habit I made her develop when we hung out at her house and I realized she didn't do it already. Annoyed, she put up with me making her come inside, lock the door, sit down, then do it again. I enjoyed being at her place. I enjoyed when she came to mine to play video games. I just enjoyed it all.

It hit me, though.

This was the real moment. This was the real fight-or-flight.

Holly leaned against the door and looked at me curiously. I stared at her suddenly sobered.

I followed my feet. Slowly, agonizingly they took tiny steps towards her. It could have taken days to get to her, and I don't think we would have noticed, because behind our eyes we could see every racing thought bouncing about at lightspeed in our brains. In my own head all I could think about was what she was thinking about, and perhaps she did the same, and we reacted to what we thought we were doing. Regardless, eventually I stood within a foot of her, and then within inches, and again I was closer and standing between her legs.

Timidly, her hand stuttered and finally tucked a stray bit of hair behind my ear.

"I think you are very pretty," she explained. Her voice was whispered, but it was there, and I heard it, as much as I was not sure she wanted me to. Her hand cupped my neck. Serious Holly had those eyes that made me sure she saw right through me, that she understood me all too well. She shook her head and bit her lip again.

I wasn't sure who kissed who, but it was like a match in a forest in July, and suddenly very much out of control. Her hips pushed into me as I pushed into her. Her hands pushed off my coat somehow. My hands touched her hips. My thumbs slipped beneath her shirt and I felt the skin there, and I thought I'd died. I didn't have time to think of how I'd never done that before, and that all I wanted to do was touch every inch of her skin. I couldn't think like that when her lips were so warm, and she let out that little noise when I moved. That noise. That noise would make men declare war.

I rooted my hands in her hair and pulled her impossibly closer.

In a flurry, we kicked at our shoes and I yanked on her coat until she smiled, breathlessly, and pulled away for a second to let it fall to the ground. In that moment, I lost control. To be fair, I never had it. But her eyes were different now. They were amber and honey and warm and I nodded despite the fact that I hadn't been asked anything. So I kissed her more. I kissed her neck when she tilted her head. I sucked and I bit and I kissed wherever I could because it was all I was made to do in that moment. In any moment, really. Just to hear that whimper.

Holly pulled on my belt. I slid my hand higher until my fingers covered her ribs and held her breath, fanning to cover the skin there. That was my bold move.

"We should..." she gulped audibly and paused, catching her breath. "We should stop, maybe." I kissed her again to protest.

"No," I lifted my shirt and threw it on the floor. "Unless you truly want to," I left it open to her. It was her fight-or-flight at this moment, and I could appreciate it because I was somewhat new to them, and I assumed she was as well. I watched her look at me and I felt self-conscious, but it an almost acceptable way. She shook her head and kissed me harder than before. Her fingers dug into my hips, dug into my neck. Her tongue slipped. Her lips moved. Her hips pushed. She shook her head again and held my hand as we moved towards her bedroom. My heart was beating like I'd run up a mountain at full speed. I couldn't catch my breath if I wanted.

"I couldn't if I tried," she breathed, resting her forehead against mine. She pinned me against the wall beside her bedroom.

This is what the fight would look like.

I'd never appreciated that more.

* * *

**Chapter 4: The Modern Leper**

* * *

_You're not ill and I'm not dead.  
Doesn't that make us the perfect pair?  
You should sit with me and we'll start again  
And you can tell me all about what you did today._

It was the dip in her spine that did it, and I was nearly completely sure. More likely it did not accomplish it on its own. But with the help of that singularly sneaky ray of sunshine that defiantly pushed itself through the only slit in the curtains, combined with my incessant need to touch the morning and the soft and filtered light it brought to the tiny meadow in the valley of that dip in her spine. I'd nearly expected there to be dew on the tiny and fair hairs there, white and winter wheat there in the daybreak.

I had not meant to wake her because when that happened life would be set in motion and that was the one thing I wanted to avoid most at the moment. But the sheets sat so low on her hips and I'd woken with an almost nightmarish realization that I had not touched her there. Thus it was the dip in her spine that did it and of that I was even more positive.

"Morning," she yawned, stifling it in her pillow.

"Morning," I smiled at her sleepiness. I smiled at her sheets and her hair thrown haphazardly about her face and I smiled because I was here and not in my own bed which was decidedly more noisy and outrageously more lonely.

That conversation happened yesterday, as well as the day before, and going for the threepeat felt right. My phone was dead somewhere, my clothes were still in a pile in the hallway with hers from Friday night at the penny. The weekend passed too quickly, but at the same time held no temporal bounds. It had been quiet, it had been personal, and when I thought of it in those ways, it'd been terrifying. But when I thought of it as just a naked weekend where we watched movies, and Holly taught me to root for her hockey team, and we ordered pizza and watched, and I kissed her everywhere, and everywhere, that was a weekend I could emotionally handle. It was the most personally impersonable way to spend forty-eight hours with someone, and I oddly enough approved.

She didn't ask about my mother, she didn't ask about my birthday or brother or friends in high school or what I thought about politics. We talked about books, and movies, and music. We spent a lot of time with music. We spent a lot of time being exactly who we wanted to be in this moment. The most personal things eventually come out though, in tiny ways, in important ways. Like when we listened to Van Morrison and Holly told me about how absolutely sad _Astral Weeks_ made her, like it was the saddest thing in the world in her heart, but she made us both be quiet and listen to it the entire way through. She had a penchant for that. I told her that I hated basements. It wasn't much, but it was all I had. Those are the things that matter, though.

I continued to be an intrepid explorer in the valleys of her spine, bravely gliding over the treacherous terrain of her back and shoulders, so deep in thought and filled with the mission at hand I was incapable of dividing my attention between anything else but solely this monomaniacal quest to satiate my curious fingers.

"Fuck! What time is it?" She sat up quickly, knocking things from her nightstand to the ground in her urgency to find her phone. My fingers flopped to the bed in the commotion.

"Break-everything o'clock, obviously," I cringed at the noise. I watched her scrunch up her face as she read the time.

"Fuck," she sighed again. "I'm due in court early."

"The alarm hasn't gone," I reminded her, settling back down into the sheets. Holly had comfortable sheets. She had sheets that smelled good. She had sheets that were soft and fresh and I was a fan.

"I never set it," she turned to look at me guiltily. "I think I got distracted. You don't start today, right?"

"Only this afternoon for a meeting and to pick up my gear," I shrugged and rolled onto my back. I watched her watch me. My eyes struggled not to look at the naked expanse of her back and the hair that fell there. They struggled not to look at anywhere but her face since that sheet was hiding nothing and I didn't want to be caught gawking.

"I have to go," she decided after looking at her phone again. "I'm really sorry," she stood and started looking for clothes. "This weekend has just been... well," she paused, holding clothes in both hands and looked at me in her bed. "Pretty awesome," she decided. "I was hoping we'd get to talk a bit, you know... figure out... never mind. I mean, I didn't want to just run out, obviously," she looked at me quite exasperatedly and with a heavy sigh. "And oh my God, I'm naked."

"Yeah you are," I nodded and wiggled my eyebrows playfully.

"Close your eyes or something," she continued to search before settling on clothes in the closet.

"I've seen you naked," I reminded her. "A lot, recently." I checked out her bum. I liked her bum.

"That's not the point," she sighed, slipping on underwear. I wasn't sure why I enjoyed that so much, but there was something intimate about this whole set of rituals occurring. "That was then, and this is now," she explained, fastening her bra. I quite liked it. And she looked... "It's Monday, now, and I have to go to work, and so do you."

"So..." I sat up, tucking the sheet about myself, suddenly more aware of my own nakedness the more clothes she put on.

"So," she zipped her skirt and brought up her shirt. "I know you," she looked at me square in the eye as she buttoned. It wasn't an accusation, but simply more of a statement of fact. "And I'm not putting much stock in this weekend. It was fun, it was time consuming, and I don't want to pressure you because you're like a, you're like a," she fixed her collar and brushed her hair quickly in the mirror while she tried to figure out what I was. "You're a cat," she shrugged and moved quickly into the bathroom, as if that explained it all. I suddenly hated myself for that metaphor. I still hadn't moved. I heard the water running. "Sho I haff to wait for you to get usht to being in my tree," she explained while brushing her teeth and digging for heels at the bottom of her closet.

"So I don't get to see you naked anymore?" I cocked my head, confused by the turn of events. I wrote odes and sonnets on her skin while she slept, and now? I heard her spitting in the sink, rinsing, doing God knows what. I couldn't just tell her that I did those sorts of things. That was appalling and made my very bones feel uncomfortable, like they were covered in moss or mold.

"No," she reappeared looking completely ready. She quickly put earrings in while she looked at me. "You can see me naked whenever you want," she explained so simply and easily, it was almost difficult to register that we were talking about what we were talking about. "I'm just trying to not let myself get used to this, you know?" And there she stood, completely ready to go to work, giving her wrists a small squirt of whatever smell that was distinctly Holly. I shook my head widely and exaggeratedly.

"Nope, nope, nope," I kept shaking my head. "Don't like that. Nope." But I understood it, oddly enough, because I was lost in the valley and singing from the highest mountains of her shoulder blades because I wasn't sure I'd ever try the summit again.

"You don't want to see me naked whenever you want with little to no emotional accountability?" she asked quite seriously. I squinted at her, trying to figure out the turn of events that had transpired in the past three minutes.

"This is a trick question," I wagered, and despite being serious, I earned a laugh from her. She shook her head and grabbed her phone from the nightstand.

"Not at all," she promised, leaning towards me. "I have to go to court or a serial murderer will most likely walk."

"I do want to see you naked, more," I promised sternly, in case she had any doubts.

"I know," she cooed at me like I was a child and patted my cheek quite cheekily. "Because it's awesome." She kissed me, then. It was sweet and soft and oddly perfect. "I'm in no rush," she promised. "Except for now," she righted herself. "I'm in a literal rush, but with us, whatever... us... that's problematic terminology. I mean... Listen, I'm comfortable in the tree, but I'm not going to go rustling it. So no pressure." I wondered if this was a brave face. I figured this was a brave face because I knew that she was quite stuck in the tree already. That was obvious to even an emotionally stunted and socially incompatible person such as myself.

"So everything stays the same?" I ventured cautiously.

"Yeah," she shrugged.

"But naked..." I stared at her again, disbelieving.

"Yes," she agreed again, heading towards the door. "I have to go. I'll see you later. Have a great day, okay? Play nice. Make friends."

"Yeah, you too," I managed to wave. "Good luck in court."

"Just lock the doorknob behind you," she shouted from the living room, and the apartment was silent a second later.

I think what prevailed most in the moments that followed the tornado that was running-late-for-work Holly, was the completely unsureness of what exactly happened and if there was another way I was meant to go about it. And as I replayed it, I was unsure of my memory and how reliable it might have been regarding the series of possibly wonderful events that led to nakedness and little to no emotional ties. There was no reason to doubt that Holly was capable of actually letting me just... of letting us happen however it happened. In fact, there was a plethora of overwhelming evidence that she was, in fact, quite serious about not freaking me out.

While trying to maintain some sort of composure, I decided to get up and put on my old clothes. The clock in the kitchen said it was nearly 9:30 by time I started to search for some form of sustenance among the cabinets.

I took this opportunity to make myself some toast and do what any self-respecting former cop would do, and snoop. As I munched happily on my bread and jam, I looked at the stacks of books that seemed to cover every available bookshelf in Holly's apartment. A shelf over here consisted of medical textbooks, another, annals of a forensic pathology journal. This one was full of novels, all that varied in range from Homer and Hamilton's _Mythology_ to Salinger, to Twain, to Nabokov and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, then back again to Doyle and Rhys and Capote, further still to Marquez and Wright and Hemingway and Plath and Joyce. I didn't recognize half of the other names, but they seemed to all be there. Every book ever written seemed to be sitting there among her shelves, and I hadn't read more than ten of them combined.

What was more telling, however, were the pictures and momentos scattered among the books. A picture of her and who I am guessing was her family, mom, dad, brother and cat included at what looked like Christmas time. Her parents had their arms around her and she was smiling so hard I thought her teeth must have broken right after, and her eyes were barely there, eclipsed by her cheeks. In another frame sat Holly and a girl that looked exactly like her, only shorter, and they were drinking and clinking their glasses together, all the while smiling happily at the camera. There were more pictures, everywhere. Her family, hockey games, baseball games, graduations. I got to watch the entirety of her life and the important people within it, and that made me incredibly awkward and intrusive. Suddenly my toast didn't seem so appetizing.

Amidst the trophies and odds and ends, I realized how little I did know about her, and that was terrible.

All that I saw was that Holly had an entirely happy existence, complete with an entirely happy family that seemed very happy whenever she was around. All of the pictures showed that. Her fridge was accented with not just take out menus, but pages colored in horrible marker and ill-advised shades of colored pencils. She was the type of person that people wrote postcards to. I couldn't help but wonder more, and that was why I didn't like to snoop. She had an entire life I was incapable of understanding.

Almost sadly, I threw my toast in the rubbish bin and decided I need to change before heading into my new job and I couldn't get out of Holly's apartment soon enough. It filled me with an overwhelming urgency to fear how lived in the space was, and how a person occupied that space.

And as I gathered my thing and opened the door, I was oddly afraid to leave. Inside was everything I ever wanted and everything I was terrified to have. And it was just sitting there.

I locked the door behind me and I hailed a cab for home. That was the simple thing to do. The house was empty with the boys at work, and that was a godsend in its own way because seeing them would make me tell them what I'd done for the weekend. And that would ruin everything.

My room was not Holly's room. It was not filled with pictures or books or anything interesting of the sort. It had a bed. It had clothes thrown about. It had my dirty gym bag in the corner. Hanging on the wall was a dummy sheet of my first bullseye, that was it, and it terrified me that if I were to die, you could come into my room and not know anything about me. It should not be like that. If Holly were to die, her parents would come and cry as they packed up her pictures, relive the moments of her life, look at her books and be proud of how learned she was, donate her medical books, smile at the spare hockey sticks in the corner.

These things weighed heavy on my mind only because I realized that the tree was more than Holly. The tree was way more. I should have been more offended that she distrusted my ability to handle whatever was happened. It should have bothered me more that she was right.

The weekend seemed so long ago I decided as I started out towards my new station.

"Right on time, Peck," Captain Beckett greeted me in the foyer of the expansive building. "Pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise, sir," I shook his hand eagerly. "I'm very excited to have been chosen."

"That's half the battle," he explained. "The other half is staying." I eyed him as he eyed me, his green eyes nearly hidden by the hard leather-like skin that I assumed came with age and weather. His white hair was cropped short, but he was quite tall, and his body, though old as he was, retained an almost freakish system of muscles. "Now," he started moving towards the door on the far side. "I understand you've been piggybacking a few hours here while still at 15." He slid his hands into his pockets and moved quite gracefully despite his size.

"I just came in to acquaint myself," I explained, following. "Get my HR paperwork done and so on."

"Let me introduce you to your training officer," he moved towards a small office off of the main floor which included the firing range, mock city, and gym. "Officer Peter Burton," he held the door for me. "I'd like you to meet our newest addition, Officer Gail Peck."

The man sitting at the chair in front of the desk was not as tall as Captain Beckett, but he was taller than me. He was not as overtly built either, but there was tone to him. He smiled and had very soft eyes.

"Nice to finally meet you," he shook my hand as well.

"Same here," I shook back heartily before taking the seat that Captain Brackett motioned for me to have.

"I understand you've met a few of the guys and gals already, correct?" Burton asked, adjusting his legs in the chair beside me, though never looking at me completely.

"A few," I shrugged. "One dated my roommate for a while."

"Dean?" he asked, sharing a smile with Beckett.

"No, Sue," I informed them, to which they laughed.

"That makes sense," Burton nodded to himself. "Anyway, listen, we will be spending the next eight weeks simply training you, sometimes with and without the group. You will be sitting in on any requalifications that might come up within the command, and you will be sitting in with the team you'll be assigned to, if they have any missions. Does that make sense?"

"Of course," I agreed.

"You, lucky, lucky you," he handed me a think folder on top of a thicker binder. "Have been assigned to Bravo squad. They are up at a moments notice, they are ready, and they have one of the highest success rates in the division."

"Of course," I gulped with the weight of the books.

"I need it to be clear, that for the next two months, you are not on the squad, you are training. What do you think that means?" he asked, quite condescendingly.

"I get a wooden gun?" I offered. He smirked.

"Exactly, to an extent," he leaned forward, moving his hands on the captain's desk. "We have to train you within the group to see where you best fit, and we have to see how you get along with everyone. The person next to you controls if you go home, not the psycho you're taking down."

"I understand," I nodded.

"We've read your file," Burton continued. "I think you'll do well here. Just," he paused and stood to leave. "Don't take any shit, and don't give any shit. I have water drills to supervise. We'll see you tomorrow, alright?"

"Yes, sir," I stood and shook his hand again.

"Good," and with that my training officer disappeared. It made me miss Oliver in the worst kind of way.

"Let me take you to get your gear and uniform," the captain offered. "I think we can find you a locker, too."

He made small talk as we walked through the building. He asked about my mother and father and brother, and that was to be expected because he worked with them enough throughout his career. He was kind in a stern way, and reminded me of my grandfather. He told me about training and what I could expect, as well as who I should expect to interact with. It was all oddly calming. He carried my binder and book and folder when I tried on my new armour and uniforms, all the while talking about this and that. After I left what I would need for the next day and one extra uniform in my newly assigned locker, he walked me out to the front before handing me back my materials.

"This is a hard job," he finally started as we stood in the afternoon sunlight. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered me one before taking one for himself. "It's good that you don't," he lit it. "Don't ever start." From the carton packaging he pulled his wedding ring out and put it on his finger. "I've found that the job is easier when you have someone to go home to when it's all said and done. When you have someone worrying about you and fretting over every scratch, it makes you smart, makes you cautious, and that keeps you alive, makes you want to keep the teammate next to you alive for their someone." He took a long drag and I adjusted the duffel on my shoulder. "Do you have something to keep you alive?" he asked, flicking ash towards the cement. His eyes searched me hard, and I did the same to him, wondering if I should question myself, or answer honestly. I nodded slowly, then more sure of myself. "Then you'll do just fine, Peck." With one final draw, he snuffed the cigarette on the post of the railing and threw it into the bushes. "And that will really chap your mom's gears," he grinned. I returned it conspiratorially. "See you bright and early, Officer." With a quick nod, he went back inside, and I was left with just a heavy bag and an even larger black hole of anxiety in my gut.

It took me a moment to squelch it before I could start walking home. With the bag and the books it housed, I wasn't sure I would ever make it, but I subjected myself to the journey on purpose. It was self-imposed penitence. It was self-imposed self-actualization. It was an excuse to be away from everyone for as long as possible.

"That's a big bag," Chris looked at me from the couch as I wearily kicked the door open.

"It holds all of her ETF secrets," Dov chimed in. I heard the familiar music and shrieks of video game characters blaring from the television.

"I think it might be big enough to hold a body," I dropped it and sized it up. "Care to help me try it out, Dov?"

"How was it?" Chris interjected. "Were you on some covert team bonding ritual all weekend?" I paused mid-kicking off my shoe.

"No," I quickly took of the other. "Just had paperwork. Boring stuff."

"Right," Dov shook his head and winked. "If that's what you're calling it."

"How was good ol' 15 today?" I quickly retreated to the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the shelf in the fridge.

"Same old, same old," Chris called back. "We caught two drug dealers today. Just us."

"Congrats, gentlemen," I cheersed them from the kitchen.

"We're heading out to the Penny soon for trivia, care to join?" Dov offered. "Or are you too good for the little people anymore?"

"Oh, boys," I pushed myself to grab my bag and lug it the last few steps towards my room. "I've always been too good for the little people. My new patch doesn't mean anything. Thank you, but I think I will stick in tonight. I'm exhausted and have to be up early tomorrow."

"Keep it down when you leave," he called as I went down the hall. "We're on surveillance tomorrow night."

"No problem," I grumbled as I shut my door, dropped the bag with a thud, and leaned against it, nursing my beer in my chest tenderly.

Reluctantly, I picked up the materials I'd been given, and I started reading. I did not want to. It was daunting and boring, but it also meant I would be able to jump out of windows, repel down buildings, and shoot bad people sooner. So, I climbed into bed and I cracked the book. I read with no end in sight. I made notes in margins, and I read parts out loud to remember formations and how commands would sound in my own voice. I turned on my light when it was too dark to see the words after sundown. I became engrossed and it was kind of nice, to be away from myself.

"I said I'm not going, Chris," I answered the knocking at my door without getting up to open it.

"Good, or I wouldn't have found you, I guess," Holly let herself in slowly.

"I'm sorry," I sat up, closing the book as I righted myself from my lazy pose. "I thought you were Chris."

"That's what you said," she smiled and closed the door behind her. I gave her a look. "You forgot your phone at my place. I thought you might need it eventually."

"Thanks," I stood to take it and simply threw it on my bed. "You didn't have to bring it all the way over tonight."

"I wanted to see you," she shrugged bluntly. "See how the meeting went..." Slowly, Holly began to move about the room. Her hands rooted in her pockets were the only thing that kept her from picking things up to look at them harder.

"It was alright," I watched her move. "How was court?"

"Smashing," she turned back to me after seeing all there was to see in under ten seconds. "I think they'll convict. We should know in a few days. I'm exhausted though."

"Long weekend?" I asked jokingly as I took a seat back on the bed. We were carefully moving about each other.

"Something like that," she gave me a smirk. "I'm sorry I had to leave so suddenly this morning," She offered. I shook my head and reclined against my headboard.

"It's no problem," I yawned. "It actually all makes sense."

"Yeah?" she looked hopeful.

"Yeah," I promised and patted the bed beside me. Her body reminded me of a tiger's. When you watch a tiger's movement it's sleek, it does not waste, it glides in its very own muscles. That was how she moved to lay down beside me. "I'm okay with how things are going," I explained.

"Me too," she lied. I felt her head on my shoulder. Her arm wrapped around my stomach and her leg slipped between mine as her hip eclipsed my own. Her thumb moved along my rib soothingly. "I don't want things to be weird. I don't want them to change us. If that makes sense." I hummed and closed my eyes. Her hair tickled my neck slightly, but I didn't want to move.

"Tell me about your family," I whispered, nuzzling her forehead with my cheek. Because things had changed. Whether she wanted to acknowledge it or not. For me they had changed at some point, and whether I was comfortable or not, that didn't matter.

"That's a long story," she laughed slightly to herself.

"Okay," I waited patiently for her to start.

"My sister has three kids," she began, and I was hooked.

* * *

**Chapter 5: Chariot**

* * *

_You're a wrecking ball,  
with a heart of gold._

"Come on, Duncan, I want a clean entry," Sergeant Burton yelled as we re-stacked upon the mock building. "You look sloppy."

So we ran it again. We threw open the door, eliminated assailants, and rescued dummy hostages. And we did it again after that. I would probably reenact it in my sleep because my muscles remembered every inch of movement because we'd spent an entire day in full gear working on urban operations and it lost the allure of excitement after the fiftieth or sixtieth entry.

"Now we have one more," Burton let us regroup in the middle of the compound. "Peck," he pointed towards me. I felt the eyes of my team on me quickly. I gripped my gun slightly tighter. Two months of training, and I hadn't participated in a real call. I'd watched fifteen fake bomb calls, I'd watched from command as they took down a suicide jumper on the hotel downtown, I'd stood around aimlessly while the squad worked with 15 on a possibly subway shooting. That was the cake, really. My entire old squad realizing I was still carrying the metaphoric wooden gun. "You are clearing this," he pointed behind himself towards the tall house on the corner of the make shift lot. "Alone."

"Okay," I nodded. I was slapped on the back and whoops and laughs were made.

"And we," he gestured to the rest of them, all smiling to themselves. "We will be your assailants. And we will be hostile."

"Awesome, guys," I shook my head. "You couldn't have warned me about this, today," I nudged Gibson beside me. He shrugged and smirked.

Not five minutes later, the entire house was set up, and I was left outside, oddly nerved by the silence. That was what happened, recently though. I craved different types of silence than before. I liked the quiet that came in the middle of the night on nights when Holly was beside me, and she was breathing steadily and occasionally kicking at the sheets. That was rare because of work and our commitments. Namely me. It was rare because my roommates would ask questions, so I went to the bar with them instead of watching the game at hers. Sometimes I would see her there, with her friends, and I'd spend the night trying to not look to see if she were looking at me, which inevitably lead to me looking at her as she tried not to look to see me looking at her. And on top of the imbalance of the Penny with Dov and Chris and Andy, there then came the pull towards my new team, and being involved with them, which lead me to being the new short stop on our rec softball team and going to cook outs. And it lead to me spending hours after duty was over working out with various members, learning all they had to teach me informally, soaking it in, only to find an occasional missed call on my phone when I reached my locker and realized it was too late to call her back. Amidst all of that, there was little time for the quiet of Holly and I in the dark, or the quiet of my head in her lap when she read. Or the quiet of dinner and the city silently buzzing outside. Or the quiet of listening to her talk about a case. Or the quiet of washing her hair in the shower.

The whistle blew from somewhere in the house and I took a deep breath, forgetting all of that, because that right there, the forgetting, that was the job.

I opened the door and crept my way through the dark house. It went smoothly. I cleared the bottom floor, taking out Mendoza and McBride respectively. I moved up the stairs, trying to remember every piece of training and finesse I'd acquired over the past two months. That was difficult. Trusting my body to react correctly without thinking was terrifying. A creak behind me as I made it to the top of the stairs made me turn around and immediately shoot Salih. He knelt with a 'fuck,' and took off his mask. I gave him a smile. As I turned back to the hallway, I was met with a crushing weight. I rolled and flipped whoever had tackled me so they ended on their back about a foot away with a huff. I righted myself quickly and found my gun just a foot away. Before I could grab it, they were up and at me again. I punched and kicked, as hard as I could, earning grunts of pain despite the protective gear, until I could grab my gun and subdue Wagner. I took another deep breath and ducked a trip wire at the end of the hall. A heavy, almost metallic thud echoed in my ears as I was hit from behind as I walked into a bedroom. I staggered, caught myself and righted, turning to find Gibson waiting, dummy knives in hand. It took a little more to finish that. My head was whirling from the thumping he gave it, and I couldn't see straight. But after slamming his wrist, I dislodged the weapons, swept his leg, and slammed him hard.

I stood catching my breath as he laid on the ground grinning and panting. The bedroom door opened again and I snapped my gun to it, recognizing Burton and shooting without opening my mouth.

"Well done," Gibson clapped my back as I took my helmet off and wiped my sweaty forehead on the back of my gloved hand. I walked down the stairs to meet the rest of the squad.

"Hell yeah!" I was with the other members of the team and applause. I laughed and tried not to blush.

"Looks like they approve," Burton joined the applause lackadaisically. "Maybe you get a real gun next time we go out," he smiled.

"What?" I felt like I wanted to cry, I was that happy, but that wouldn't have worked here at the moment. "Seriously?" The guys laughed. I'd worked hard for this. I'd slept very little, I'd read books, I'd lifted, I'd run, I'd jumped, I'd shot, I'd trained, I'd sweat, I'd ached. And here it was.

"You're going to need this, though," Gibson opened his side pocket and pulled out a patch for me. "I think you've earned it." He slapped it on my arm where the empty velcro had been waiting. "I would take one for you."

"I would take one for you," I jumped and hugged him tightly. The process repeated, the same words were muttered as each member punched my arm, and I took it as my arm grew deader and deader.

"Welcome to Bravo," Captain Beckett was the final in the group. He simply touched the patch and shook my hand.

"Aw you guys," I finally caught my breath. That was difficult. I hadn't expected it. I had expected to get slaughtered in the house and then made to do suicide drills until the end of the day. "I don't know what to say," I shrugged. "Thank you," I nodded, looking at my team. "Thank you so much."

"You earned it," Salih shouted. The rest whooped and yelled.

"Alright, gents," Burton clapped his hands. "Gear down and enjoy the rest of the day. Delta is on duty, and you are free for the next," he paused and looked at his watch. "Sixty-four hours."

Everyone mingled for a moment, congratulating me again before deciding to get while the getting was good, and with promises to celebrate my patch with a night on the town whenever everyone got back. Evidently when we got consecutive time off, no one wanted to be anywhere near work. That was foreign to me, but most of my team had lives.

I followed towards the dressing rooms. The men's locker room was much larger, but then again, there were only four women in the division, so I was more willing to concede that.

"Any plans?" Gibson asked as he started to take his vest off while we walked.

"I honestly hadn't thought about it," I did the same and rubbed my neck. "Did you have to hit me so hard?"

"Don't be a baby," he nudged me. "I had to make sure. I couldn't have a stack-up partner who I wasn't sure could take a hit."

"Mission accomplished," I rubbed the spot tenderly. "What are you going to do with the free time?"

"Soccer dad," he flipped over his vest, and from a small, sewn in patch that was a purple and green polka dots, he pulled his wedding ring and put it on. "My oldest started pee wee soccer last month. It's quite a show. Toddlers chasing a ball around that is about as big as they are."

"Sound hilarious," I offered.

"Yeah, so I'm going to take my wife out," he stopped at the splitting point of the genders. He leaned against the divide. "Dinner and a movie. Regular boring married people stuff. Make my kids pancakes in the shape of teddy bears." He had a really far away and happy smile.

I lifted his vest while he spoke and looked at the inscriptions. Scribbled 'I love you Daddy!' and 'be safe' stood out.

"Yours is empty," he noticed.

"Some of the guys is empty," I shrugged.

"Not on our team," he shook his head as if giving me a lesson. "It may be superstition, but it helps. This job isn't about running fast or shooting the straightest, it's about coming home, and it's ninety-nine percent mental."

"So you've never been shot?" I cocked my head challengingly.

"I've taken my lumps," he nodded to himself. "Lucky that nothing penetrated, but my wife feels a bit better knowing my heads in it. You don't have time to think about soccer and pancakes when you're in a shoot out. But the moment you're hit, they're the first things you want on your mind."

"Have a good weekend, Pete," I turned and nodded appreciatively.

"We're celebrating your patch when we get back from break," he called behind me.

"Alright, Mr. Mom," I turned just to see him laugh to himself, look at his vest, and saunter into the locker room.

I showered and took a count of my bruises, both new and ones healing. I let the hot water soak into my bones for longer than I'd originally planned. But it felt so nice, and it was a quiet that I could tolerate. It was a quiet I actually enjoyed. I toweled and packed my duffle with old clothes that needed to be washed, and anything else I thought I'd need to think about for the next sixty some hours. It was as heavy as all the thinking and implications that came with it.

Without even thinking of heading home, bag and all, I hitched a ride with Yates from Charlie team, towards the Penny on his way home. I enjoyed him as well. I enjoyed my whole team, and I enjoyed the whole division. I think that was rare, but necessary in this type of work. Yates was our team first baseman. He was quiet, and he was thoughtful, which made him perfect for this work. I offered to buy him a drink to repay the ride, but he was on his way home after a call, and I understood how tired he looked.

"Guess who isn't buying her own drinks today," I saddled up the stool next to Oliver and Andy and Chris.

"The Queen of England?" Andy sassed.

I slapped my patch on the bar.

"It's official!" I couldn't help smiling. There may have been a hint of a squeal in my voice.

"You got patched!" Chris hugged me and swung me around happily. "Congratulations!"

"This," Oliver motioned for the bartender. "Is amazing news. Today, we celebrate for many reasons."

"This is awesome, Gail," Andy held up the patch and smiled, nodding happily. "How was it? Tell us about it, come on." I took the shot, and grabbed the whiskey.

"Why are you guys here so early?" I paused as I was about to start.

"We busted a dog fighting ring," Chris shrugged. "Dov lost a bet, and Traci has to follow up the leads. We are the conquering heroes."

"Well congrats all around then, champs," I clinked my glass with their bottles.

And thus we ended up, just the four of us, alone at the Penny at two in the afternoon just beginning our celebratory drinking. And oddly enough it was nice to catch up with them for the time. I drank slowly, but Chris had no time to waste. It all reminded me that now they would see me, and I'd be in a different uniform, but on the same team, and I wanted them all to write something nice inside of my vest, but that felt way too intimate. That was for the person you think about when you want to come home. Instead we talked. They filled me in on possible situations they were working on. I told them about my surprise qualification ritual. We talked shit about each other's softball team. We joked and laughed, and for once we felt normal, like friends meeting at a bar who didn't shoot people sometimes, or who didn't hold dangerous illicit substances for a living. And there was a sense of quiet in all of that.

"Well, kiddos," Oliver stood and reached for his wallet. "I am going to be late for dinner."

"Send Celery our love," we all crooned as he threw some bills on the counter.

"Yeah, yeah," he grunted with a smile. "Get home safe. Peck," he paused before turning away. "Real good work."

Gradually the bar filled with the regulars that came in after shift change, and that changed it completely for me. Feeling oddly courageous after my day of bravery, and built up on the camaraderie of my friends and the three glasses of whiskey, I knew what I had to do. I looked at my duffel on the floor as if it were hiding something sinister, as if I was holding contraband or something worse. Maybe it was.

"I think I will be heading out as well," I slid off of my stool gracefully.

"Aw, not you too," Andy shook her head in disappointment.

"Yeah," Chris whined. "We never get to see you, you're off with your ETF friends." I couldn't help but laugh.

"I shall see you both later," I promised. "You got this?" I asked, looking at my empty glasses. "Thanks!" And with that I shouldered my bag and found my way into the cold and chilly street.

The whiskey in my blood made the wintry evening bearable, but at the same time had a sobering effect that was slightly hindering. I didn't care. I had two days free, and even though Holly had to work, I was going to see her as often as she'd let me, because I hadn't seen her in a week, and I wanted to see her. That was all it was. I wanted to see her. I hadn't seen her enough during training, and now I wanted to see her. I kept repeating it to myself, because if I stopped, then I would that ridiculous question that plagues man's mind at all times. Why. Why would lead to what, as in what does it mean. What would lead to how. As in how could I do this and how could it work, which always was followed by if. And if ruined me. If brought me back to why. So I focused on the fact of it all. I wanted to see her, and there was no why. I just did. If I just did, then it was unemotional, and things are not made of flesh and bone in that way.

By the time I made it to her building, I was huffing under not just the heavy bag on my shoulder, but the strain of my mind to focus on the task at hand. I realized things had changed when I knocked on the door, and for those seconds before she opened it, I was completely terrified of the change. While I understood that things could not stay the same. We couldn't just keep hanging out naked and junk and not learn things about each other, it was the nights where we just talked and slept and woke up and went to work with nothing more than a kiss at the door that changed it all. I was lying to myself if I thought I'd get out of this one. Change doesn't come in quickly and thunderously like a tsunami. It comes in puddles and drips in the attic roof. That's how slowly change happens so that you do not notice until it's completely different. It does not snow one day and draught the next. Autumn cools so that each evening you mumble to yourself it is time to get the heavier coats out of storage, and winter fades into spring where the ground thaws, not in a microwave on high for thirty seconds, but gradually and with purpose until it is summer and your leather seats are too hot for you to sit on.

And then Holly opened the door, smiling and laughing from something else. And I was not so completely terrified anew.

"Gail," she gulped. "Hi," she closed the door behind her softly, then launched herself and her arms around my neck. "Gosh, it's been so long. How are you? What are you doing here?" she squeezed between words. I felt her nose on my neck. I felt her chest on my chest. I felt the whole length of her on me. I was off-balance and unable to hug her back, though I wanted to. "I haven't heard from you. Are you alright?" she pulled away only to smile, that huge smile, that I was certain she felt in her ears.

"I got patched today," I gulped, nodding as her arms stayed around my neck, though she slumped away slightly. She kissed me, squeezing her arms once again. I felt her smile against my lips, and there was a type of kissing in that.

"That's amazing," she was a bundle of happy energy at the moment I needed that. Maybe everyone's reaction in my life was spoiling me. Or this was the living that Oliver had mentioned.

"Yeah," I nodded, sharing her catching smile.

"So you came here looking for celebratory sex," she pulled away completely, her smile still there. "I'm honored."

"No, no," I shook my head quickly. "I didn't, not completely," I kept shaking my head. "I just..." I readjusted my bag. My arm and shoulder suddenly felt all of the weight. All of the weight. I looked at my bag and everything it held. "I haven't seen you." The entire time I tried to speak I felt her eyes on me.

"I get it..." she ran her fingers up my hand that had somehow balled itself into a fist. I watched her fingers on my wrist. I felt them, but seeing and feeling weren't corresponding for some reason in my brain. Her eyes were big and dilated and there was the quiet. She wanted to take the weight. Not just the bag. She wanted to take all of the weight.

"Honey, are you coming?" the door opened behind her and I felt my heart jump. "Oh hi!" the woman from the pictures opened the door larger. "I didn't know we were expecting more." Holly's mother was short. Much shorter than Holly. She looked like what I imagined a mom who baked cookies after school and wore yellow dish cleaning gloves looked like. She had Holly's nose and chin and eyes. She looked at her daughter's hand on my arm and toweled her own in the dish cloth over her shoulder.

"Just," Holly let go and turned her mother around, "give me a second, Mom." She grabbed the door shut as she returned to the hall of just us. She looked guilty. She looked bothered.

"I'm guessing your mom is here," I adjusted the strap once again. I felt a blush in the very root of my clavicle.

"Weekly family dinner," she nodded. "It's never at my place, but I got suckered into it because my nieces were at a field trip downtown already, so it made sense, I guess. I don't know," she huffed and leaned against the door. "They don't get downtown very often, so they decided to make it at mine."

"I'm sorry," I tried to make it better. "I should have called. I was just in the neighborhood, and we were at the Penny. I'm just going to-"

"Well, have you eaten?" she interrupted, straightening herself. I was halfway turned on my heel, but I slowly circled back towards her and shook my head. "Would you like to?" That was the sexy voice. I knew it was different than her normal voice because it was softer, and deeper, and it was dripping. She moved closer. "It's usually over by ten," I felt her body pressed on my own just by the colliding of our electrons. Her cheek was almost on my cheek. Her hand was on my hip. "Then we can celebrate," she half sang, half whispered, half murmured, half telepathically somehow spoke it to my pants, in a way that made a chill not only start, but grow and shake and tremble its way through my bones, up my spine and into the roots of my hair.

"This is a trick question," I nodded as she pulled away only slightly. Her eyes were in front of my eyes. I closed mine and leaned my forehead against hers. I'd gotten a taste of this, and I didn't want to wait until morning to see her. This was a lot, though, and I was not ready. "Okay," I nodded.

"Okay," she nodded.

I shouldered my bag again and followed her to the lively apartment.

I met the people I'd heard about. I met the people in the pictures. I met the people who colored the pictures and wrote the post cards. They all were polite and friendly and it was quite nice in a very scary way. The table in dining room was spread long and filled with food. Two little girls ran about while we sat. A baby slept in a sleeper. Holly sat beside me, and that made it easier when her family bombarded me with questions.

"And now, you're officially SWAT?" her brother-in-law tried another tactic. I nodded and looked at my plate.

"Sort of," I corrected. "It's ETF."

"Have you ever... you know?" Her brother asked.

"No," I shook my head, slowly eating. "I've never killed anyone." Holly kicked her brother under the table.

"Okay, I think that's enough," Holly cleared her throat, glaring at her sister to help her out.

"All day you just practice shooting and junk?" Her brother continued.

"In a way," I explained. Her father slapped the back of her brother's head. "I know it sounds ridiculous. But I've been there two months, and we've dismantled three homemade devices, talked down four suicides, and stopped the bank robbery on Spadina. And that's just my squad."

"It sounds very dangerous," her mother worried into her plate, eyeing me sadly.

"No, we practice," I reminded her.

"I think we can talk about anything else," Holly offered, gently squeezing my knee when they started on something else.

The conversation only occasionally dipped back to the idea of me having a gun. Instead it was embarrassing stories about Holly's childhood, and her family reminiscing about the time that she broke her tooth at a hockey game, or when her brother broke his arm jumping off the roof with a homemade parachute, or when her sister baked the worst chocolate cake in the history of the world. And I liked all of them. I liked that Holly put her hand on the back of my chair, and that I got to help dry dishes and stack them in the kitchen with her mom, and she didn't ask me any hard questions. She was very nice. She was very wary to make me scared, and I think Holly told her things. That was foreign to me, but I just answered as best I could.

All in all, the evening passed without serious incident. I behaved like a rational, normal human being, and I was rewarded with seeing her family, a normal, seemingly wonderfully supportive family. That was nice. It was like watching a movie, and that was perfect because for a few hours, it takes you away from your life and it takes you away from what you may not have and gives it to you. You go to the movies for magic, and spending a few hours with someone else's family is a sort of magic. It disillusions. You don't hear about deep seated regret or jealousy. You hear how much they love each other. That parts the easy part.

"It was nice to meet you," I offered as Holly's mother reached up to hug me at the door.

"You take care of yourself, Gail," she held my cheek in a way that mom's were known to do, with those mom eyes, and with that mom worry. I nodded.

"It's been a pleasure," her father shook my hand after hugging his daughter tightly. "Thank you for all your service."

"It's been enlightening," her brother gave me a hug. "Don't be a stranger, alright? I have the new Battlefield on pre-order. We'll have to play."

"Definitely," I agreed and gave him my tag in his phone as Holly said goodnight to her parents.

Her sister had her hands full with the baby, so I held the door as she kissed Holly's cheek and gave me a quick wave, followed by her husband carrying two sleeping girls. And when the door finally shut, the quiet that was left was new. Holly leaned against the back of the couch and looked at me. I couldn't do anything but look back at her.

"I'm so sorry," she shook her head, crossing her arms. "That was a lot. They are... a lot."

"They were nice," I offered. "Your family loves you. It was nice to see."

"They're exhausting," she rolled her neck. "I had a good time, but you knocked, and is it wrong that my first thought was to just suddenly get swine flu?" I laughed despite the horribleness of the suggestion.

"Today was a long day," I kicked at my bag with the toe of my sock. "You ever realize that?" I looked up at her as she remained, fixed. "Like, you start out in one spot, and then you do things, by the time you realize it, you were in a few other places, and it all just happened, and you don't know how you actually got from point to point to point."

"It was long," she agreed. "I really wasn't trying to trick you into meeting my family. I wasn't even ready for that." That was oddly comforting. That might have actually been the most comforting thing she ever said to me.

"I made up my mind on the way over to ask you something," I knelt and unzipped my bag. "I think we've been just... well you've been so amazing, to me. And important. I made a list today," I picked up my vest. "That's the reason I came over. Because I wanted to see you. But because I made this list," I was rambling, but come hell or high water, I was getting it out.

"You came to tell me about a list?" she eyed me skeptically. I shook my head and continued.

"Not just the list. But I'm getting there. The list is of people who I want in my life and feel like they are important to have. And it has all of the prerequisites, you know. My brother, my grandpa, Chris, Traci, Andy. I think Dov was even on it, I'm not sure." She laughed and that distracted me for a second. Her eyebrows were peaked in worry. "Oliver, he was there too. Nick, for some reason. That was my list. It's not as long as yours. I think you had just a fraction of your list at your table tonight, and there are more. But that was my list. It's small, but that's how I like it. It's manageable. And they're too deep in me to get rid of them know." I fingered the fabric on the breastplate in my hand. "There is a tradition," I swallowed and started again. "There is this idea that..." that wasn't it. I stood again and lugged the vest with me. "Peter Gibson is my partner. He has two kids named Charlie and James. They play soccer and like pancakes. His wife's name is Susan. On the inside of his vest, they put little, I don't know what to call it. They wrote things, and he says it is good luck, it protects us," I closed my eyes. "I have a list," I started again. "But I hadn't thought of any of them when I got shot." I braved a chance to look at her. Her hand was over her mouth and she looked at me soul-searchingly hard.

"God, are you going to make me do this whole thing?" I let my hands drop and pleaded with her. She attempted to stifle a grin.

"You're doing great," she nodded encouragingly, regaining composure.

"It is a tradition," I started again. "I mean. I'm not the only one. Everyone. It's good luck. They're like prayers," I rambled and tripped over my own tongue.

"You can do it," she egged me harder.

"For fuck's sake. Will you just write on here so I won't die!" I yelled, blurting and blaring all at the same time. "I pick you." I was still loud. "I pick you!" I was louder.

I couldn't look at her. I'd killed myself trying to do that. I thought I had it there, til it actually came time. In terms of fight or flight, I'd crashed. Simple as that. I wouldn't look at her. I hadn't meant to yell. Maybe that was just the level I emoted. Maybe I was incapable of being at level three. I was a permanent eleven when things got hard and I actually had to try and ask and potentially be shot down.

"What if I don't want you to see what I write?" she asked, not moving from the couch.

"That's kind of the point though," I shrugged. I felt tiny. I wanted to curl up into myself and be kicked around a soccer field.

"Can I cover it?" she asked, stepping towards me. I didn't look up. Not because I didn't want to, but because my spine was weak and wary. But I watched her feet inch her closer to me. I shrugged to answer her.

"This was stupid," I shook my head. "I shouldn't... It's just a dumb tradition."

Holly did not answer me or ask another question. She cautiously took the vest from my hands and took it into the dining room. I wasn't sure if I was meant to follow, so I stood rooted next to my smelly workout bag, now void of the contraband it originally held. I heard her moving about though.

"Just stand there," she instructed, grabbing something or other from her closet in the hall. I followed orders quite well. Minutes passed. Time moved incredibly slow, or so I thought without a point of reference.

As I adjust my legs slightly, Holly appeared, carrying the vest, sharpie in her ear. She flopped onto the couch, thread in her teeth.

"Come sit," she patted the couch. "I think the wildcard game is on." I looked at her working and wondered what I'd just done. Rarely does one get to feel the full weight of their actions like this. "Gail, you're head's going to explode," Holly told me without looking up, so robotically, I sat and flipped through the television channels until I found the game.

It took me a while for the boringness of baseball to relax me into a non-feeling, non-thinking glob on the couch, but it happened after three innings.

"There," Holly held up the vest proudly. A rectangle of grey worn fabric sat in the middle of it. "Now you won't know, but I'll still be good luck."

"Why can't I know what it says?" I took it and fingered the patch gently. It was soft and gray and rigorously worn fabric.

"Because, it's a prayer, right?" she asked. "And no one prays aloud. You can't know what I pray for, or know what I want, you just have to know that someone wrote on your vest, and that's important." I nodded.

"Couldn't you have just put something like 'be safe'?" I ventured. Holly shifted and rested her head on my shoulder, hugging my arm to her.

"Maybe I did," she shrugged. "Here," she took up the Sharpie again and scrawled clearly. "Don't you dare die."

"That's quite to the point," I nodded appreciatively.

"This patch," she traced her handiwork in my lap. "means that you are loved and you have people waiting for you to come home. That's all that you need to know."

"I got patched twice today," I smiled to myself when her head met my shoulder and her hair tickled my neck.

I rested my cheek on her head and we watched the game.

"If I had one," she ventured during a sloppy double play. "I'd want you to write in it."

I lifted crossed my legs on the coffee table and settled onto the couch a bit more.

I kissed her head. Her hair smelled like vanilla. I breathed it in while my lips lingered.

After another strike out to end the inning, I changed the topic back to celebratory sex.

* * *

**Chapter 6: The Woodpile Pt 1**

* * *

**Give it to me, harder.**

* * *

_So will you come back to my corner?  
Spent too long alone tonight._

"Two down, one to go," Yates called from his base. I pounded my mitt because that was what the players on television did. I blew a big bubble too.

My appreciation for the sport had not grown as quickly as Holly or my teammates might have hoped, but I was a fan of hitting, and I was a fan of drinking afterwards on days we were off, and days we weren't, there was pizza, so a win-win all around. My appreciation of hockey, however, grew exponentially quicker, because, I think, of Holly's love of it. And win or lose, I got to be naked and she got to be naked. That was only part of it though, really. Because on nights when I didn't get a call, or on nights when I wasn't on desk, or when I was able to sneak out of the Penny early, those were days that I got to knock on her door, and we would kiss, and she would rub my back, and let me play with her hair while she tried to explain this or that. But it was my excuse. Most nights I needed one.

The batter launched one to right, and the game was over with a simple catch. I'd learned it was called a pop fly last week.

As we celebrated on the mound, another part I quite enjoyed, I looked to find Holly in the crowd and waved to her eagerly. Her smile grew and she waved back slightly. I congratulated my team with high-fives and traditional butt slapping with my glove. That part was fun as well. Basically any part not involving actually playing the sport was surprisingly enjoyable to me. I watched her bite her lip and adjust her glasses while she watched me. I smiled a big smile for her while everyone talked. There's a kind of addictiveness to normalcy, or I guess an addiction to perception that things could not get better than they are at this exact moment.

"Alright, gents," Burton clapped his hands to get our attention as we walked towards the dugout. That was an impressive word that Holly taught me so I wouldn't embarrass her anymore when watching or playing the sport. "Pizza at the Penny in about a half hour." Happily, I made my way to my bag near the fence. I was happy because I was roughly twenty-four hours from a day off, and I was happy because life was alarming on point lately, and I was happy because things just worked.

"Howdy, slugger," Holly approached as I threw my glove inside the bag and sat to take off the cleats. Her hands rooted in her sweatshirt to keep warm, and I realized I never thought she'd actually show when I invited her to watch the game over dinner a few nights ago. I hadn't really thought about it at all. But I liked it. I liked having someone root for me who was just mine and no one else's. I wondered if she'd invite me to do the same for her rec league.

"Did you see that?" I looked up at her as she wound her fingers into the chain link and watched me clamp my shoes together to get rid of the dirt.

"You mean that little double you had in the third..." she was beaming passively and playing coy. "Or that killer stop in the fifth? Because both were awesome."

"I meant the double, but yes!" I slipped my shoes on and zipped my bag. Many of the other teammates did the same. "I caught _and_ threw the ball."

"Talk in the bleachers is that you're up for a scholarship," she mocked me.

"Keep it up, Stewart," I shouldered by bag, "and I won't ask you to prom." I turned away from her to exit the dugout, all the while shaking my head and excited to leave with her.

"Good going today, Peck," Gibson congratulated me as I exited the dugout. "Didn't think I'd ever see the day you caught a ball."

"Alright, why is everyone busting my balls tonight?" I hit him gently. A woman appeared in his baggy ETF coat. "And this is my wife. Wife, this is Gail."

"It's so nice to finally meet you, Gail." I shook her hand just as Holly approached. "I can only apologize for whatever he puts you through."

"I like her," I looked at Pete who was all proud smiles and puffy chested. "I promise, he's usually on his best behavior." Holly's approach was slow, and calculated, and I understood and appreciated that. "Um, this is Holly," I swallowed hard and introduced her as best I could. "Holly, this is Pete and his wife, Susan." I chugged from my water bottle like I hadn't had water in years.

"Pleasure to meet you," Peter shook her hand.

"Likewise," she returned. "I've heard many things."

"That's always comforting to hear," he adjusted his bag as well. "I wish I could say the same," he gave me an accusatory glance. "What is it you do?"

"I'm a forensic pathologist," Holly spoke with her hands, even when they were in her pocket.

"That sounds so interesting," Susan stared intently at Holly. "And exciting."

"It can be," Holly decided. "Most days its computer and boring lab work. Some days I get to dissect bodies, so there's that."

"But still..." Susan was a bit in wonder. "Is that how you met?" she turned to me. "While you were at 15?" I nodded and looked at Holly for conformation as if I hadn't been there at all throughout the whole process of meeting her.

"Honey, I think we'd better head home to relieve the babysitter," Pete checked his watch, gave me an apologetic look, then looked back to his wife.

"Gosh, we really should," she checked his as well. "You'll have to come over for dinner sometime before it gets too wintery."

"That sounds really lovely," I offered. We exchanged goodbyes and Holly and I stood there for a moment in the autumn evening watching them disappear towards the parking lot. She wrapped her arms around his middle and he spoke with his hands as they walked. I wondered if that was what marriage was like, simply put, in just that moment. I still didn't get it.

"They're nice," Holly offered in the quiet of the entire field dispersing.

"They are," I agreed. We still didn't move. "Lets get out of here."

"Agreed," she sighed and we turned on our heels towards her car.

This was how easily the past few weeks had gone. The ease between us only seemed to grow and get easier, if that made sense. I wondered what I'd actually done when I asked her to write on my vest. I wondered what it meant for us, because for some reason the fact that whatever was happening was going so well, just didn't compute. To be fair, I was the champion of the universe at repression my emotions to almost pathological degrees, who gold medaled in avoidance and came in runner-up in not even acknowledging that I had feelings in the first place. If anything, I'd gotten better at it, while at the same time teaching myself to give up those ideas with Holly. With her, I could tell her things, maybe they weren't necessarily about myself, but they were things. And that had to matter. I used the word 'us'. That was enough, sometimes, for me. Sometimes it was too much.

The night was ready for snow. Winter was in the air, and we felt it in the clouds of our breath that lingered amidst the trees. I followed Holly towards the parking lot, sneaking my hands into her pocket and greedily holding her hand to keep my fingers circulating.

"That was a lot of fun," Holly finally offered. "Thank you for inviting me."

"Thanks for coming," I interjected.

"I feel better seeing the big guys on your team," she looked over at me for a second before pulling out onto the street. "Not that you're not incredibly buff and rugged and such," she quickly amended. "I'm just glad you have back up."

"And you get to put a few faces to names," I realized she knew a lot about me. She nodded.

We spent the car ride joking about this and that. It was easy. It was without pressure. All in all, it made me wonder if this was what Oliver was talking about, and if this was living. Because things were kind of working out for me, and in ways I'd never expected. While I was wary and hesitant, they had been steadily getting better, enough so that I wanted to get attached to them. Holly sang along badly to a song. I made fun.

When we reached her apartment, I went to shower and Holly made us sandwiches. I would not leave things at her apartment. Because if I did, then, well I wasn't sure what would happen, but I did not allow myself to do it. Instead, I felt like I was constantly in a battle between yesterdays clothes and remembering to keep an extra set in my locker and stealing little bits of hers and wearing it back. It meant that whatever bag I had on me had a clean set of clothes and toothbrush. Ironically, it was easier that way. Emotionally. For me. It was easier. The entirety of my plan to just choose to make things easier by effectively avoiding them was going swimmingly.

Instead, I used Holly's shampoo and I used her body wash, and I smelled like her for a little while a few times a week. I was careful to behave like a guest, at times. But I felt comfortable. I was living this complex dichotomy of believing and resisting.

"What's cooking, good looking?" I asked, wrapping my arms around Holly's waist as she stood at the counter. I liked how her shoulders looked when she was hard at work. She was not incredibly muscular, but her shoulders, they were just wondrous. I dug my nose into her neck as I peeped over to look at her handiwork.

"Grilled cheese," explained, slicing precisely. I kissed her neck. I let my hands stretch and my fingers widen and I touched as much as I could. I hid my face in her hair and allowed myself this moment. "You smell nice," she slowly wiggled and turned. As if instinctually, her hands moved and her arms rested on my shoulders.

"Thanks," I gave her half of a smile.

"I plugged in your work phone," she explained. Her fingertips were on my cheeks, then, and on my jaw a second later. I felt her hip bone with my thumbs and rubbed it raw. "You look tired." Her fingers were soft under my eyes. "Early to bed for you."

"I will have twenty-four hours of uninterrupted sleep tomorrow," I promised.

"That's not true," she shook her head. She looked at me from under her lashes. "It will be interrupted." And then with the smirk and the everything and the her and, just and. "If you wanted to invite me over."

Slowly, Holly dipped her head forward, ever so slightly. I felt her fingers in the fabric of my shirt, pulling just below the collar. She kissed me languidly, taking her time and it felt like the entire world was suspended in honey. I understood what those bugs stuck in amber felt like before it hardened. Millennia could have passed. I pushed against her, because that was all anyone could do at a time like this. But it didn't matter. Her hand on my chest, pulling the fabric, keeping me close. I didn't want to go anywhere else.

It was the soft shuffling of plates that moved when I cleared a section of the counter slightly and lifted her to it that broke my haze for just long enough to look at her. Hair strewn about wildly, lips parted and puffy and sneaking between her teeth. I could feel her trying to catch her breath. Here eyes, though. They were indescribable. All they wanted was more of me, and that was a lot, right there. Her legs wrapped around my hips and she pulled me tighter, smirking as she kissed me again. So I didn't have to even think about her eyes any more. She hummed. It reminded me of purring as a cat would. Low and necessary.

My hands had grown brave, both because of practice and perseverance. They rarely asked permission or moved as tentatively. They had grown accustomed to her, while at the same time remaining forever in a state of marveling at being allowed to touch her, to explore the soft, dewy skin of her ribs, to trace the thin, fragile skin of her collar, to rake along the expanse of her thighs. They pulled at her shirt and threw it on the floor. She returned the favor.

After that, it was a fury. It was her hands and my hands and pulling and biting and pushing and tasting and more and less and more again. It was the dip in her spine, and tepid and humid slickness that waited there when my hands ventured there. It was her noises in my ears. It was her nails in my back. It was her hips on my hips. It was the sweat on our skin and the prickle it gave when our breath reached it. It was her gasping. It was the feeling of it. It was all of it. And it felt good.

"Dinner is cold," she said, her forehead between my shoulder and neck. Her body shook and jolted every few seconds, but that gradually subsided.

"I'm okay with that," I decided, wiping the hair that had been matted to her forehead. My heartbeat was rampant. My heartbeat was in a conga line. My lungs were trembling. My muscles ached and strained and felt every neuron because of her and what she did.

"I didn't know grilled cheese got such a response from you," she had that post-sex voice that made my body tickle.

We sat like that, naked in the kitchen. Holly's legs stayed squeezing my hips and we ate our grilled cheese. And like that we talked about our day. Holly told me about work, and exciting things about her family, and she rambled and spoke and I watched and split my sandwich with her in a way that made me oddly contented in the moment. It was not intimate. It was life.

It wasn't a question, anymore, if I was going to stay the night. I don't think it had ever been, actually. So while she showered, I threw the clothes in the hamper, put on an old shirt, and did the dishes. Things grew to this, and it was simple.

"You didn't tell me you were submitting another paper," I looked up when I heard her come into the bedroom. I reclined, flipping through her abstract and trying to decipher some of the terms throughout the lengthy paper.

"I'm waiting to hear back from an old colleague," she toweled her hair and opened her drawers. I had more questions, but she let the towel drop to put on a pair of shorts, and I forgot. "Then I will probably rewrite half of it," she hung up the towels and slid into bed. "And in about two months I will submit it for review." I nodded as if I understood.

"You're just so... smart," I put the paper back on the nightstand.

"That's not what you call it," she teased, turning off the light. I did the same and slid under the blankets.

"You're just such a nerd," I corrected myself. Slowly, she cozied into me. What should have struck me was the ease to which the entire evening occurred. But I didn't think about it. I didn't have time. She murmured sleepily into my shoulder and I fell asleep smelling her freshly washed hair. There is a peace in that that is unquestionable.

It wasn't my phone that woke me. It was Holly squiggling about and nudging me with tired protest. With groggy eyes, I turned to find my phone blaring and making itself known.

"I have to go," I rolled back to her and whispered. "Work."

"What?" she sat up slightly. "It's dark."

"Yes," I rubbed my eyes and swallowed away the idea of getting a full eight hours. "It is dark. Go back to bed."

"I'm up," she sat up as I stood, hair wilder and bigger than before, eyes squinted shut.

"I have to go," I pulled on pants and pulled up my hair. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" she nodded in the dark. I made out her features only from the glow of the street outside.

"Be safe," she whispered as I leaned over and kissed her. She held my shirt to her and kissed me harder. "Be smart. Be brave," she insisted.

"Yes ma'am," I nodded, kissing her lips, kissing her forehead. I waited until she laid down again, and I left as quickly as I could, shoving my phone in my pocket and locking the door behind me.

It was a quick run to the station, but in the late night or early morning as it was, the cold froze in my lungs. I'd had calls before. I'd been to scenes before. I'd been woken in the middle of the night and inserted into whatever cluster I was about to enter, before. I'd never been called while at Holly's though, and that was new and made my tongue feel heavy and slick with things I wish I'd said.

I nodded to some of the people who had already arrived before running into the locker room and changing. I fingered the patch on the vest and stared at it for a moment before putting it on. Be safe. Be smart. Be brave. I chanted it.

In less than 10 minutes since the call came through, the squad was decked out and standing in the entrance being briefed.

"We have a hostage situation at the Prince Edward Hotel," Burton briefed us as we filed into the cruiser. "Four of the lower floors," he handed us maps, "have been barricaded, and guests moved to the lobby."

"Why?" Wagner peeped up.

"A supremacist group, apparently, are making a spectacle of the government negotiations in town this week," Burton continued. "We have officers surrounding the building on the ground. All entrances are sealed from the inside. We have no accurate count of how many hostiles are in there, but the hostage count is up to over a hundred, not including employees. Police on the scene are scouting records and hacking the hotel computer to get a range of names and people inside. We have to be efficient. Delta team will be on the roof, making their way down, we have snipers surrounding the perimeter on the roofs. Clear lines of sight are limited and obscured. We have communication, but we have no negotiations established yet." He paused as we started to roll out, the truck speeding its way towards the chaos. "You guys, this is the real deal, and we need to be on top of it. We all come home tonight."

I sat there holding my gun while the caravan rocked down the road. I'd never worked with hostages. I had thirty-nine calls under my belt, but they were simple. Simple was a bad choice of words. My calls had been manageable. I'd only had to train my gun on someone once, and I only had to use necessary force a few others. We were in, we were out, no casualties.

"So Holly, huh?" Gibson leaned over and interrupted my plagued thoughts.

"Yeah," I nodded, not looking at him. "We're about to go into a huge hostage situation. Can we focus?"

"So she's like your..." he continued, not heeding my worry. He only waited a few seconds for me to try to fill in the blank. "Come on, I'm trying to do the girl talk thing. Keep us from going mental." I groaned. I suddenly hated the softball game. "She's hot," he nudged me. "What's the deal with you guys?"

"I don't know," I sighed. That was actually the truth.

"Come on," he whined. "I'm curious. You can't just dangle a fruit out like that, and not expect to address it. My wife wants to invite you over, and she's not sure how to do it. Would it be just you, or Holly as well? My wife is a very curious person. And she makes me ask these things."

"I don't know," I flopped back in my seat. "And that's the truth. I actually don't know. I haven't thought about it. I don't let myself think about it."

"But she cheered for you," he offered. "And you've never played that well before. I'm going to invite her to our games in the future myself if it means you'll play better." He got a chuckle out of himself. I scowled. "Let's narrow it down. What do you guys do together?"

"We hang out," I shrugged. "Have dinner, watch movies, read, drink, go to the park, have sex, play games, talk, sleep, watch hockey."

"Right," he nodded, mulling it over. "Watch sports and have sex. Do you stay at hers?"

"Yes,"

"Do you go to your place?"

"Sometimes. Not often. Rarely."

"Do you see her everyday?"

"No."

"Do you have to tell her, do you call her, do you have formal dates?"

"No, I mean, we call each other," I answered. "We hang out."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Um, about six months." The math was quite alarming when I said it out loud.

"So you get sex and food whenever you want, and she lets you watch sports, which I know is null for you, but let me have this fantasy," he worked it out slowly. "And you have no formal responsibilities? You can call her or not, you don't have to go do whatever she wants. If you want to go drinking with us, you do, no questions asked. You just show up whenever you want?"

"I went to family dinner once, on accident," I remembered, wondering if that would fit into his calculations.

"What are you guys yapping about?" McBride scooted slightly closer.

"Peck's girlfriend," Pete informed him. I cringed and put my head in my heads while I shook it, embarrassed and wanting to become a turtle suddenly.

"Oh, that hottie with the glasses?" he elbowed my other side. "Nice."

"She's not my girlfriend," I gritted, tossing my head back in frustration.

"Are you sleeping with anyone else?" he joined in on the questions.

"No."

"Do you want to?"

"No!"

"So you're dating?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. The exchanged glances and seemed to enjoy my inner turmoil and embarrassment. "She wrote on my vest." I said it quietly and quickly. Sometimes that's just how you have to say truths.

"Ahh, so you love her," Gibson chuckled. "I guess that changes things."

"That's not... I can't say... I wouldn't call it... I don't think..." I sputtered and stuttered.

"You should ask her to be your girlfriend," Pete decided.

"Yeah, definitely," McBride repeated. "She was hot. Great ass. Good choice."

"Why would I ruin a good thing?" I was aware I was suddenly and inexplicably asking their advice, and that was confusing.

"Who knows why we do the things we do," he sighed, waxing poetic. "But you don't want her to leave, and that's how you keep her."

"You're talking about that hot piece from the softball game?" Wagner leaned across the aisle. "Well done, Peck." I just stared at him. "I did not see that one coming, but when it did, I was impressed."

"So that's who she belonged to," Salih joined the fun. I pulled on the collar of my uniform to find some air. My collar was strangling my blush. "Well done indeed."

"You guys are the worst, and I hate each of you," I groaned. It felt like physical pain. They laughed and patted my back roughly.

"Listen, Peck," McBride explained. "We all remember our first girl, and you know, it takes a bit of practice to understand them." He was the epitome of faux compassion. "But what you're describing is the epitome of perfection. You don't let that go."

"Oh stuff it, Tim," I elbowed him. "I can handle it."

"If you can't, send her my way," Salih joked, earning high fives and hoots.

"I think I'm with her because she was sick of little boys," I narrowed my eyes on his crotch, "and their little toys. I can get more done with my little finger," I held it up and winked at him. The car erupted with laughter and Gibson shook my shoulders while he laughed, patting and congratulating me.

"Now you're just being mean," he laughed and nodded his head in forfeit.

"Alright guys," Burton opened the back hatch and we piled out. "Let's do work." The air sobered us, and the ride was five hours ago in our minds.

The street was different and busy, completely lit up in the middle of the night with lights and spotlights from helicopters. Medics and cop cars barricaded the street as far as I could see. The noise was a constant cacophony of yelling and running and shouting. When I finally made eyes on the building the first thing that registered were the banners slung from windows. Some were sheets from the upper floors asking for help. But the larger ones, the ones that were lower were worse. 'No Peace. No Negotiations. No Government.' they read. Others said similar things. All were hopeless.

I followed the squad towards the command center on the corner. We started our briefing and tried to gather intel.

"Gail? Gail!" I heard my name somewhere in the crowd. I turned quickly.

"Chris, what are you doing here?" I took off my helmet to talk to him. "Andy? You guys should be back farther. We don't know what we're dealing with."

"We were working the area," Chris explained. "Listen, from what we've seen those guys are wearing more gear than you. And they're loaded down."

"Did you tell anyone what you've seen?" I turned back towards the tent where Burton was looking over papers. Andy nodded.

"They shot three hostages already, just because we tried to talk to them," she gulped. "Be careful in there."

"You guys really need to get back now," I informed them. "All uniforms need to be back, and behind something."

"We'll see you after," Chris nodded, moving back towards the patrol. I only allowed myself a second of watching them before returning to the tent.

"We have to move, now," I murmured to Burton. "They've already killed three hostages."

"I know, Peck," he stated, staring at the table and blueprint. "I know."

Eighteen minutes after I left Holly's apartment, I was stacked on a hallway moving soundlessly through a hotel kitchen.

Nineteen minutes after I left Holly's apartment, I reminded myself that I was not allowed to die.

Nineteen minutes and ten seconds after I left Holly's apartment, I took a deep breath, counted to three, and opened a door.

* * *

**Chapter 7: The Woodpile Pt 2**

* * *

_Won't you come and break down this door?_  
_I'm trapped in an abandoned building._  
_Come find me now, where I hide and_  
_We'll speak in our secret tongues._

"I need a scotch," I saddled the stool at the bar and dropped my bag.

Bars look different in the morning. Bars look different in daylight. The Penny was more attractive with the sunlight. The wood was hearty and rich. The jukebox was blinking but quiet, and that was what I needed. There weren't the normal rings and sticky layer on the bar top. It was empty except for the owner and the workers bringing in the stock for the week. More importantly, it felt oddly warm and inviting, which was important.

"Can't help you, pal," the guy didn't look at me for my request. "We're closed. Liquor laws."

"This is a cop bar," I sighed, resting my head in my hand. When I looked up he was staring at me. "Give me a scotch." He sized me up and slowly took out a glass and handed it to me after digging in a new box, opening the bottle, and pouring me a generous helping. "Leave it," I took a swig and hissed as it burned my esophagus.

"Can I call anyone?" he offered. I shook my head and swilled another gulp in my mouth.

I dropped my helmet at my feet. My boots were dirty. My pants were dirty. They had blood. They were torn apart, and my exposed skin had gashes. I ignored it all and stared at my glass. It was nearly empty, so I finished it and filled it again. Though my body ached, it would essentially disappear at times, and I appreciated that as well. It would feel worse in the morning.

While I sat there, I am positive I did not feel anything else. By midway through the second drink, I'd realized I'd couldn't feel the alcohol yet. It took me less than ten minutes to polish off my first two drinks. The bartender occasionally glanced in my direction, but I concerned myself with memorizing the lines in the wood with my fingers.

I understood that I was supposed to keep it together. I understood that we all did it in different ways. But at some point, it can be too much, for a moment. So I sat still. I moved only to raise my glass or pour from the bottle. I moved only to swallow. I moved to fold my sleeves because they were constricting my arms. I didn't move, and for a while, I was convinced I'd forgotten how to speak.

Eventually, by midway through drink three, the deliveries slowed until it was just the bartender cleaning and doing adjustments throughout the bar. He turned on the television behind me for noise, and I could appreciate that, because even though I was sick of noise and chatter and loudness, the silence was strangling my eardrums. The quiet sat in them like acid, melting and making them filled with molten cartilage that hurt. It physically hurt. But the quiet murmur of the television where he had it set, was just a rabble that cancelled out the quiet. I didn't need the words. I needed the idea of words.

"You were in that?" he eventually wiped the counter near me and braced himself on the edge for a chat. I looked up at him to see he was watching the television. "Forty-eight confirmed hostage casualties," he read from the ticker, or so I imagined. I took a sip. "Can you believe that? What makes people do those things?" I wasn't sure if he was waiting for my answer or not, so I poured myself more and stared at it until he left. I didn't have it in me to turn around and look at the screen. I knew what it would be saying in its little captions. The city was waking to its very own tragedy, and I had been front and center.

I had flashes of what happened, when I blinked or zoned out for too long. The woman with the white coat and her face when it happened. I drank. The man in his sweats, fresh from being yanked out of bed, executed, and his eyes were still looking for help when we reached him. I drank and slammed my glass down. The masked hostile, and the bullet hole in her throat from me. The glass cracked in my hand. I wiped the shards onto the ground and grabbed another from behind the bar, softly pouring myself another. This one was smeared with my blood from my hand. I wiped it on my shirt with the other fluids there.

"Gail!" I heard the door open. I'd suspected they'd find me. It took longer than anticipated. "God, I was worried about you," Chris sat beside me. "Are you alright? You have... I mean..." he grabbed my chin and appraised my face. I wouldn't look at him. "That was an intense morning." He was still in uniform. "By the time we got the streets cleared, ETF was gone," he explained. I sipped. "It's a mess," he shook his head. "You guys did an amazing job," he explained. "Really, I mean it."

"Any word on those taken to the hospital?" I stared at the glass and continued to wipe away at the blood that kept appearing there.

"Two more succumbed to injuries," he rattled off. I drank again. "It was a long night, can I take you home? You can take a hot shower, I'll make some breakfast." I filled up the glass a little higher than normal, held it in front of me, eyed it, and drank again. "Gail, it's alright. Today was a hard day. Let me take you home, or to the doctors. You need to get checked out." I shook my head. His radio went off, and he answered. "I have to get back. The scene is getting crazy. Are you going to be okay?" I held up my glass and nodded one heavy, heavy nod.

"Hey," Chris called to the bartender. "If she needs anything, call me," he wrote his number down and handed it to the keep. "Gail, you did the right thing. You did what you had to do. You saved over a hundred people." I chuckled. "I'll be back as soon as I can." He kissed my head and made his way out of the bar as quickly as he had come in.

"Boyfriend?" the barkeeper asked me, flipping the card with Chris' number between his fingers. I laughed, glared, and sipped a bit more.

He left me alone after that. The light in the bar changed slightly as morning gradually slipped into lunch. The news was still on, but I was lucky enough to have a bartender who didn't care about quiet, and turned the volume up for it to echo in my head with each memory. But I couldn't find the words to ask him to turn it off. I didn't have any words right now. He did stop by to leave a sandwich beside me, on the house.

"Diaz said I'd find you here," Oliver hopped up and took a bite from my untouched sandwich. "We're going to be down on that scene for the next few hours. I thought I'd take a lunch and see if you were still here." He chomped away at the food. "You know," he started, signaling for a water. "There comes a time when you have to pull the trigger, and the first time..." he trailed off, slowly wiping his hands of crumbs. "It changes you. It's difficult. You doubt yourself, you replay every minute, wondering if there was some way you could have done it differently." He paused only to drink. "But you couldn't have. You are trained, very well. And them, those assholes in there, they weren't coming out alive. You have to know that. And the longer they were alive," he was shaking his head, upset. "They would have hurt more people. They would have hurt you." I drank to drown out his words. "Come on," he finished scarfing the food. "Let me drop you off at home before I head back. You're due for a shower, maybe I can whip you up a better sandwich, because I just did you a favor, that was terrible." I hadn't moved the entire time he'd been there. I blinked because I wasn't sure the last time I'd done that either.

"They died," I swallowed, not turning to him. "It was crazy in there, screaming, chaos, gunshots, crying. They used the hostages as shields." I drank instead of crying.

"Listen, darlin'," he braced himself on my shoulder and squeezed. "You were textbook. Today, you stopped the bad guys. You were Superman."

"Superman doesn't kill."

"I have to get back," he sighed. Oliver rubbed the scruff of my neck. "Are you alright here?" I drank and gave him a slight nod.

"Hey," he called to the bartender. "If she needs anything," he was writing down his number. "Call me, anytime, okay?" The bartender smiled and nodded. "Gail," he turned back to me. "I am very proud of you as a human and as a friend and colleague. And I am here." I didn't move, but he hugged me to him and kissed the top of my head. I drank when he left. I filled my glass again.

"Boyfriend?" the bartender asked again, stacking the numbers atop each other. I didn't acknowledge him.

I tried not to, but I listened to the news. I closed my eyes and listened with the glass pressed against my cheek. And the news did what it is known to do, it broke. The reporters mixed with analysts who mixed with press conferences from important people who mixed with survivors who were too shocked to even be seen who mixed with breaking facts about the gang that mixed with facts about ETF that mixed with facts about the hotel that mixed with facts about the conference that mixed with obscure and pointless facts about this and that, unrelated, but seemingly interesting because of their obscurity. It made me sick. It might have been the scotch burning a whole through my digestive tract. But I'll blame the news any day.

By mid afternoon, a few people trickled in. Mostly it was cops who had been working the streets downtown overnight. No one touched me. No one came near me, and I was grateful for that. Eventually, I think it was about glass seven, I unstrapped my vest, and weakly and stubbornly pulled it off, letting it fall to the ground by my helmet. I stared at the patch on it. I wondered how powerful prayers were and how they worked, and who for. They seemed impossible.

My shoulders ached when I took it off. My back hurt. My ribs were tender, but I sat a bit straighter and drank a bit more.

"I have to say," Gibson scooted a stool closer to me. "I didn't think I'd find you here." He picked up the half-empty bottle and appraised it thoughtfully. I swilled the leftover liquid in my glass. "I thought you'd be sleeping it off, or maybe out on the lake." I shrugged. "Today was what the job is," he started, reaching for a glass, he poured himself some from my bottle. "You pull a trigger and someone dies." He twisted the cap and placed it back in front of me. "Ninety-nine percent of the time, it's the bad guy. But that one percent," he drank. I twirled my glass against the bar top. "You're allowed to feel... horrible, I guess. I don't know. No one knows. You're allowed to feel it," he promised.

"I do," I whispered. My voice was hoarse and raspy and foreign. "I feel it all," I swore. Pete was quiet, and we finished our drink. People milled about around us. The news blared still, mixing it all into an indecipherable chorus.

"You did your job, today," he slid his glass to the edge of the bar. "You did it well. You did it to the best of your abilities given the situations, and I would not and did not act any differently than you did. You were not alone, today. You are not alone. You did not make the call. We didn't make it today. They did," he explained. He adjusted slightly and pulled out his wallet, throwing some cash on the table.

"My first big event," he turned so his elbows were relaxing on the bar. I poured myself another. "It was a routine bust, a meth den, and there were kids in the house, so we went in soft. We shot their father and mother right in front of them. They had guns on us. They fired." He took a deep breath. "And I found myself sitting in a bar like this one, drinking a scotch, much like this one, hating myself. And no one came to take me home." He patted my back soothingly. "This," he pointed towards the bills. "Is for the bottle. Drink your fill, make it hurt. Feel it all. I will see you at work tomorrow."

"Hey," he called to the bartender. He wrote his number on a piece of paper and slipped the bartender some cash. "If she needs to get home," he nudged his chin at the money. "If anything happens, call me." The bartender nodded.

"It doesn't get easier," Pete stalled before walking out the door into the autumn evening. "But it gets more manageable." And with that he, too, walked outside. The bartender looked at me and opened his mouth.

"Shut the fuck up," warned him, shaking my head authoritatively. I downed the rest of my drink and filled it once more. He walked away, taking Peter's glass with him.

I listened to the news again. The count was up to seventy confirmed dead. Two were ETF agents. I knew them, vaguely. They were Alpha team, and they flanked and got ambushed. So what happened now, was officers knocked on their wives' doors and told them how brave they were, and all the while, the wives will hate it. They will secretly wish their husbands had been cowards. And I couldn't do that to someone. I couldn't be a knock on the door.

The blood on my hand was dried, but it hurt, so I poured some scotch on it to clean it. It was a waste of scotch. So I poured my glass full, finishing the bottle. Instead I lowered my chin and stared at the completely full glass. The room was on an axis. I'd done Pete proud. Everything hurt.

"There you are," Traci took the stool beside me. I felt like a talk show host. "We've been worried sick. We called your phone a million times."

"Chris told us you'd been here," Andy was on my other side in the blink of an eye. "He did not tell us that you started without us," she picked up the empty bottle. "Are you alright, Gail?" I didn't move, but stared at my full glass. To be fair, their words only half-registered in my head.

"Can we take you home?" Traci offered. I felt her hand on my shoulder, rubbing gently. "You need to get cleaned up. I promise, that after a shower and maybe some food, it will feel a million miles away."

"We've been on the scene all day," Andy tried another tactic. "It's been dreadful. We can only imagine what being in there must have been," she struggled to make me feel better. "It's... you did... I know it must have been difficult."

"Gail, honey," Traci ran her hand through my hair, partially. "We're here to help." I chuckled. I sat up a bit straighter and sipped from the top of my drink slowly, so it wouldn't spill.

"We're here," Andy repeated. "What can we do?" I continued to stare straight ahead.

"Hasn't moved?" I heard Chris a few minutes later. "Gail, come on, you have to leave eventually. Let us take you home. We'll get you cleaned up. We can order pizza." I drank a bit more and closed my eyes. "People died today," he tried another approach. "You can't die too. We're here for you."

For a while, they argued over what to do with me. I just sipped.

"Gail?" I heard Holly's voice above all else, as if I was a dog and could smell a million more smells than humans. I felt her hands on my shoulders a second later. "I've been looking everywhere for you." Her voice was relieved and upset at the same time. I thought that was impressive. But not quite as impressive as the strength it took for her to twirl me around on the stool. "Oh my goodness," she had those worried eyes. But, all I could think about was that I liked her hair when it was down. It was wavy and nice and I'm sure it smelled like vanilla, and I liked that.

"You're drunk," she sighed, looking behind me at the bottle. I nodded stupidly. "Oh my God, look at you," she held my palms up, with their cuts and gashes and dried blood. "I've been worried out of mind," she dropped my hands. Her eyes had a bit of wrath in them now. I gulped. "Are you alright?" I realized that everyone had been watching this happen. I nodded. "Are you ready to go?" she asked softly, looking at my hands again. I hopped off of the stool and wobbled slightly. I felt Chris and Andy at my sides.

They helped me to the door. Holly picked up my bag and vest and helmet, and I was grateful for that. I heard everyone murmuring, and pulled my arms away from them, as I was capable of walking, at least in my opinion, reasonably well considering the amount I'd had to drink. Somehow I got into Holly's car, and somehow we made it to her apartment.

"I watched the news all day, waiting to see if I'd see you," she scolded me as I stood in her bathroom. "I called you, a hundred times." Gingerly, she lifted my shirt over my head, followed by my bra. She let my hair, all matted and gross as it was, down as best it would go. "I was worried," she looked at me with big, teddybear eyes. They were glassy and it hurt my heart. She shook her head. I saw a streak of a tear.

Holly ignored it all though, and untied my boots, slipping my feet out of them as I held onto the wall. I felt like a four year old. She unbuckled my pants and pushed them down until I stepped out.

"You know," she worked on the water and made it warm. "You left my bed last night," she led me to the shower and helped me step in. I hissed as the water found all of my dirty cuts and bruises. "The least you could have done would be to let me know you weren't one of those agents that was killed or hurt. I'm trying, here," she tilted my head back. I heard the tears in her voice and I was thankful I was in water. "You're a fucking cat," she explained. Her fingers were gentler than her voice. But I craved them both. I didn't want her to stop talking because I was afraid I was imagining it. "But a phone call wasn't difficult. Just a simple, 'I'm not dead,' would have been all I needed."

"I killed people today," I swallowed.

I kept my eyes closed as she rinsed my hair, washing it softly, scrubbing the dried blood and dirt from it. She moved to my body next, carefully washing and checking each scrape and cut. She washed away the muck and the grit of the morning, which suddenly felt as if it happened years ago, because yesterday was too close to process.

When she turned off the water, she wrapped me in a large towel and sat me on the toilet where she pulled out a first aid kit and dressed some of the deeper cuts. She held my palm and wrapped it with gauze. Methodically, she put it all away and brushed my hair. I stood and followed her into the bedroom. She dried me again, and pulled out her old, big sweatshirt, the one I liked to see her in because it eclipsed her and she always looked so cozy. She slipped it over my head, helping me with the armholes. The front pocket was missing and I realized that was because it was on my vest now, at least in part.

"This was my dad's," she explained, helping me step into a spare pair of shorts. "My biological father's. He was killed when I was about eight." I watched her stare at me. "He was hit," she swallowed, "by a drunk driver on his way to work. It was so stupid, really. So I have this, and my mom used to tell me that it was magic, like armor, and it would protect me from anything bad because it had magical dad powers. I guess I still believe in it." I nodded. "We should put you to bed now," she decided.

I crawled in, silently and stiff as a board. I watched her get ready for bed, turn off the light, and a few seconds later, I felt her slip in beside me. I was fight or flight. Slowly, I felt her body creep towards my own. And when she did, my muscles relaxed instantaneously.

"This is part of the job," I whispered. I felt her hand splayed on my ribs, holding on tightly. "The worry, that's part of it. The knock on the door that I've been hurt. The hearing the news," I paused just to hear her breathing. "T'hat's part of it. It's mandatory. There's no getting around it." My hands gripped her as best they could. "That's a lot, to put on someone else," I confessed.

We were quiet. Headlights made the window streak with gold and pass across the ceiling as it passed. Her hair did smell like vanilla.

"You're not scared, are you?" I ventured. Her leg moved and ran alongside my own.

"Terrified," she nodded into my bicep. "But I think that's the point."

"You're not going anywhere, are you?" I was quieter than quiet. Her hips tilted slightly. Her hand rubbed my side.

"No," she finally admitted. "Are you?" I thought about that deeply in the dark.

"Nah," I decided. "Not without a fight." She giggled a little. I wrapped my arm around her. "We talked about you before we arrived on the scene." I started in the quiet again. "The guys asked if you were mine. They said you were hot."

"That's quite a compliment," she shifted and sighed sleepily.

"And said you had a great ass," I remembered.

"I'm honored, I think," she chuckled. I played with her hair.

"You're my girlfriend," I blurted. "I think, at least." She was still, and I felt her body tense slightly.

"You're drunk," she reminded me.

"Yup," I agreed. "But still."

"I don't need a title," she yawned.

"But I want you to come to my softball games," I whispered. I was perplexed, and I wasn't sure why. The guys said this was how to do it. Perhaps not exactly, but in the grand scheme of things, it was at least in the ballpark.

"I can," she rubbed my stomach. Her hands slipped under the sweatshirt.

"Don't you want me?" I asked, fighting sleep.

"I already have you," she shrugged. "I just have to wait for you to figure it out, and see that you already got me."

"Okay," I nodded.

With her hand on my ribs and my nose in her hair, I finally fell into a much deserved and justly given deep and dreamless sleep. And the excitement I felt because everything in my life had been going great was not completely gone, but simply deflated slightly.

And at the end of the day, I think that's all I can ask for.

* * *

**Chapter 8: Glory**

* * *

_You split my skull and reached inside my head_  
_And pulled out the pictures I'd been wishing I'd forget_  
_And you stitched me up then_  
_And wiped the blood from off my chin._

"There we go!" I yelled, hitting the glass. "Get it, Stewart!" My words echoed in the quiet of the ice rink which was inhabited by a minimal and disinterested crowd. The real noise came from the ice, and it came from the skates and sticks and grunting teams battling for that final goal to separate the winner from the loser. I watched Holly get slammed into the boards on the opposite side of the rink as the seconds neared zero. "Aw, come on, ref," I hit the glass again. "Get off your knees once in a while, you're blowing the game!" The stripped skater pointed at me. I hit the glass once more before sitting to watch the rest of the game.

I'd learned the best ways to trash talk from Holly. She had a potty mouth when it came to watching games. I relished in it because she was passionate and it was endearing to hear her say some of the things that popped out of her mouth. She was a surprise that kept me guessing. That's all you can ask for sometimes, I think.

Her team managed to score another goal in the last minute, and I clapped while they celebrated. When the skated off of the ice, I made my way towards the lobby to wait for the girl.

I hadn't expected to be there. But I'd been to every going for the past five Thursdays. That happened a bit on accident. There had been Thai and beer and I convinced Holly to forgo the nature documentary for a ridiculously guilty pleasure romantic comedy, which in and of itself was a miracle. But I casually asked if she wanted to come over to mine for dinner the next night, and I had planned on cooking from scratch and everything. But she told me she had a game, and so I somehow ended up at the rink the next day as well. And I did it again the next week, only that time she gave me an old jersey to wear. And so I waited in the lobby, remembering how I'd come to be standing there, lungs full of the artificial crispness and cold that hung in the domed building, struggling to stay warm in the airy jersey with Holly's last name blazed across my back.

All in all, it was a simple process to get there. I took the subway from Union to St. George. Emotionally, I took the fact that I spent roughly two nights on a busy week, and four on an exceedingly good one, along with the fact that it'd been happening for a good many months, and added it to the image of Holly in my softball shirt and no pants making me pancakes on Sunday, divided it by the offhanded way she invited me, carried the nine, multiplied by the oddly sexy way she looked with hockey bruises the next day, and squared it all. And so I was here. She invited me, and I came, and that meant that she would stay over, and I would get to sleep and not have nightmares or worse yet, that I wouldn't get any sleep. But she would sleep, and I would sleep and there was something I needed in all of it.

"Hey," Holly found me staring at the ground, thinking about not sleeping. She knocked my breath away, sometimes, when she looked at me like that, all unassuming and just happy that I was alive and here. And then the smile, the one when she smiled awkwardly with only half of her mouth. It was easy.

"Good game, goon," I complimented her as she kissed me and I took her heavy bag of equipment.

"Good cheering," she nudged me as we walked into the wintery evening. Snow fell in soft flakes, not wanting to fall so much as simply drift about in the slight breeze. But we walked in it anyway. Me with my jacket zipped to the chin, and Holly with her mittens and hat, and I held her mittened hand, and she caught snowflakes on her tongue at times and we walked despite the shiver in our muscles.

Holly told me about her day, and family dinner the night before which I had been lucky to have to work through. By work, I meant I told Holly I had to work, and instead, I stayed at work and put in an extra hour at the gym, then went home and fell asleep until she woke me up and I got to fall asleep to her talking to me, which lasted about three hours, and I was up at four in the morning, sweating and shivering and panting, wide awake.

"I can't believe it's almost Christmas," she sighed, opening the gate to my house. The lights that my roommates hung sparkled around her. "It's the best time of the year," she decided, closing it behind me as I waddled through with her bag.

"Really?" I asked skeptically as I fiddled with the keys in the door.

"Yeah, really," she followed me. "The lights, the snow, the bells on the corners, the presents, the shopping, the decorations." She was happy. I dropped her bag in the hallway. "Don't tell me you're a grinch," she frowned, and her arms found their familiar place on my shoulders and her nose was almost touching my nose, and her smile was big.

"It's never been a big deal," I shrugged. "We didn't do cookies for Santa, we opened presents on Christmas Eve," I trailed off, looking at her shoulder because I was oddly feeling unworthy and foreign.

"No wonder," she put on her faux appalled face I earned every so often when she would decide to make a case of something and right a great injustice in my life. "Don't worry, we will fix it up. You can help me shop for my family. I will help you with yours, and we can bake cookies," I could see the ideas forming behind her eyes as they grew bigger with each suggestion, so I kissed her while she continued to list. "And we can go tree shopping," she mentioned, squeezing my shoulders. I tried kissing her again. "And go see the lights on the beach." I gave up.

"I used to be able to kiss you quiet," I furrowed my brow.

"But it's Christmas," she told me, patting my cheek. "It takes planning." I rolled my eyes and let her flop on my couch while I grabbed us drinks from the fridge. She was still rattling and thinking aloud when I returned.

"No, she hated the inflatable Santa!" Dov was lounged on the chair. "We had to take it back."

"You made them take back a Christmas decoration?" Holly looked at me hopelessly as I flopped down beside her hand handed her a drink.

"It was huge and ugly," I shrugged.

"See!" Dov raised his hands as he gave up.

"I have my work cut out for me," Holly nodded to herself as she appraised me. "You're a grinch, Peck."

So we spent the evening playing video games with Dov, and he and Holly made fun of my lack of Christmas spirit. All I worried about was what to get her, and if I should get her anything, and what I was supposed to do in light of it all. But there was something nice in the way she tucked her legs under herself and leaned into my side while we played. And the way she taunted Dov. And the way it was somehow easier to joke around with them. And how it felt quite normal. Especially when Holly yawned and rubbed my leg while arguing with Dov over the Hanukkah traditions and Christmas mentality.

Maybe this was the problem with the past month. Things grew comfortable, and I was allowing myself to get attached to it all. Maybe I already was. But it seemed like the deeper I got into it, the harder it was to live without it.

"I have to be up early," she yawned again, resting her head on my shoulder. I paused the game and yawned as well. She had to be up even earlier because we were at mine, and it was a bit further from the station. I felt slightly guilty about that. But she insisted on being at my place sometimes. She called it fairness. I was alright with it.

"Just keep it down," Dov took the controller and reloaded the screen. "These walls are thinner than you'd think." I slugged his shoulder hard. Harder than I think I meant to, but also not hard enough. He grunted and rubbed it. "I'm just saying."

"Goodnight, Dov," Holly laughed, tussling his hair. "We'll do our best."

We took turns brushing our teeth. Holly toothbrush sat beside mine. I had one at hers as well. It was newer. I liked it better. I bought it once, and left it for practical reasons only. By the time I closed my door, Holly was peeling off her shirt and rolling her shoulders to stretch the soreness away. She helped herself to my drawers and pulled out an old shirt to wear before slipping out of her jeans. I leaned against the door and watched her move about. Sometimes that struck me. I wanted to know the things she saw and what they meant and how she saw them.

Instead I sometimes just liked to watch her. Sleepily, she looked at the softball team picture tacked to the wall. There were a few other pictures. One from the Penny the night of Oliver's birthday party with all of the rookies. There was another of Dov, Chris, and I at the cookout a few months ago, before the house looked like Santa's wonderland. There was another of Gibson and I, covered in dirt and mud after the Mud Run. There was another, of Holly and I from a photobooth at the fair a few weeks ago. And they were not framed, but tucked into my mirror, but they were there. Movie ticket stubs from our movie date were bookmarks in the book she lent me on my nightstand. Her spare cellphone charger was plugged behind my desk, just below mine. And I watched her peruse it casually as she tied up her hair.

"What time do you go in tomorrow?" she asked, pulling back the quilt and sliding in with another yawn. I scurried to strip down and join her.

"Not until nine," I hit the light and felt my way to bed.

"Lucky," she nuzzled into me. I felt the warmth of her arm on my chest. I kissed her forehead. I breathed in the peace and quiet. "We have that new body. It's riddled with every imaginable piece of evidence we could want, but it's slow going." I rubbed her shoulder. "The chief wants all hands on deck tomorrow morning, bright and early."

"I can walk you," I decided. She shook her head.

"You need to sleep," she promised. It was quiet again, but I could hear her thoughts. "Have you been?" I hadn't slept with her in a week. I shook my head this time. "The dreams?"

"I can't remember," I lied. "I think it's just stress. You know, the holiday season is here and it is daunting."

"Okay," she sighed. I turned into her. Her hands were on my temples. Her hands were on my cheeks. Her hands were on my forehead and in my hair and behind my neck and on my chin. And they were slow and they were calm and they were soothing, like lotion after a sunburn, cool and collected and healing. "No dreams," she whispered, like an incantation. "No dreams," she repeated, moving her hands to different stations. "You are safe," she promised. "You are kind." She whispered these things like a prayer ritual. "You are mine. You are mine."

I kissed her and fell asleep as her voice trailed away.

And I did not dream. But I did wake up when my phone was blaring. And Holly mumbled and turned over while I pulled on clothes in the dark like a zombie. An angry, grumpy zombie who had actually been sleeping when the call came in. I couldn't decide what I was more mad about; missing the sleep or leaving the warmth of the bed as Holly pulled the covers up snugger. The code that flashed on the screen was an emergency of the highest degree. I knew in my gut what was next.

"I have to head in on a call," I leaned over her a few seconds later. She turned to me, full of sleep.

"Is it bad?"

"No," I lied again. "Go back to sleep, and I will see you tonight at the Gala."

"My pretty date," she dreamily snuggled the pillow. "Don't be late."

"Yes ma'am," I kissed her cheek.

"Hey," she sat up slightly. "Be safe," she pulled on my shirt. "Be smart. Be brave." She kissed me again and made it count.

"See you later," I grabbed my bag and bolted. I didn't have the heart to tell her the alarm was going to go off in a few minutes. Maybe it'd feel like hours with her eyes closed.

The snow was still falling. It was not hard, but it was enough to accumulate. By the time I made it to the station, I realized the alarm had gone off for Holly, and she was either shuffling to shower or was hitting the snooze. I dressed and joined the rest.

Quickly we were herded into the vehicle and on our way while Burton gave us the logistics. The morning traffic didn't help, but gave us more time to learn about what was happening.

"We have a train hijacking," he passed papers with one hand as he held on with the other as the car jolted along. "The morning train on Bloor has been taken, and it is full. Right now it is stopped between Bay and Yonge. We have confirmed four conductors are dead."

"What?" was all I heard from someone in the seats. We were groggy and behind and confused as to why bad things happened.

"We don't have exact numbers," he continued. "But it's the morning commute, so expect full cars. You will be heading East from Bay. We have Alpha coming West. Clear out as many as you can. We have reason to believe it is the same group as before, so you know what to expect." He got quiet as the car continued to bounce and weave among traffic. "Be calm and be safe out there, guys. Do what has to be done."

I sat and stared at my gun and wondered if I could quit. But then who would stack with Gibson. And he had two kids. And I couldn't think of anyone else who deserved to die more in the world than myself if it would come to that. Everyone I knew contributed more to humanity. I could run into gunfire and help.

"So, did you ask Holly to the Gala tonight?" Pete leaned over to distract my morbid thoughts. I nodded. "Awesome. See? I told you things were easy."

"I can't figure out how you compartmentalize," I sighed. "And I wish I could."

"I think you will learn," he decided. "You have to." He was quiet for a minute. "You know, my wife had to get my pants resized. And she yells at me because I waited until the last minute to try my pants on, and I told her she shouldn't feed me so well. That's what a relationship is."

"That doesn't make sense," I closed my eyes and rested my head on his shoulder.

"You asked Holly to the Gala." I felt him nod. "As your date?"

"Yes," I huffed.

"Well then we better not let you get all disfigured down there," he decided as we pulled up to the subway entrance.

In an orderly fashion we joined the chaos that was forming behind the barricades. We ran down the stairs and put on our goggles. I was here. Be safe. Be smart. Be brave. I chanted it. Sometimes I didn't feel brave. That was a confession I hadn't told Holly. I didn't want her to know that I was scared sometimes because I didn't know exactly what I was afraid of most of the time. But I was not afraid right now. I knew what I was doing, and yet I was scared. I was terrified of what I knew was waiting. Experiencing it before somehow made it both worse and easier. I was dreading it, but I had learned the hard lesson that it is easier to save one than none. It was a difficult lesson to digest. But I had a job to do, and if I didn't do it, who knew what would happen.

"One, two, three," McBride counted.

I could not remember how long it took for me to get here from my bed. Nor could I recall exactly what Pete and I talked about on the ride over, though that would be an estimated formulation with fragments I'd remembered. The tunnel was dark, and then suddenly bright as the lights clicked on and the gunfire started. I remember pulling people from the train, and I remember yelling for them to run down the tracks. I remember that the lights when out. I remember jumping out of the train. I remember the man in the mask. I remember the yelling. I remembered all of it in tiny, disjointed fragments that did not make sense in the unlinear and untimely order to which my brain sometimes remembered. But I remembered the smell. I could recall the look of the bodies on the floor of the train. I remember the 'all clear' that couldn't come soon enough. Someone told me it'd been over twelve hours.

"It took twelve hours," the medic pushed me into the seat behind the tent. I heard the yelling of the police to clear away bystanders. It took ten minutes of just sitting there while she prodded at me just to remember that we went into the subway. "We're all sitting up here, waiting to hear anything. I heard the radio. We got fragments every now and then, but really, it was just you guys down there."

"Where's my team?" I looked around, quite bewildered. I had been on auto pilot for so long it was like waking from a coma.

"They're all fine," she assured me. "Everyone's fine. Both teams." I sat back slightly. I felt blood on my forehead. "You're alright." She held my hand and squeezed. I nodded in disbelief, but just sat there while she slipped off my boot.

"What time is it?" I looked around. Helicopters were overhead. Sirens went. Ambulances were continually coming and going. I knew the tragedy that was happening again, and it made me sick to be part of it again. I vomited.

"Just after six," she checked her watch and tore at my pants from the bottom up.

When I looked around I saw some of my team leaning against the wall, drinking. They were all one piece. Maybe I'd learned to compartmentalize, because I did my job and here I was and I wasn't going to think about it. Maybe that was repression. Now I was worried that they were the same. The police continually worked and shouted and I just sat there like a bump on a log.

"How are you doing, kid?" Pete sat beside me.

"Good," I nodded. "That was..."

"Yeah," he nodded. I watched him look off in the distance. The medic tweaked my ankle.

"Oh fuck!" I hissed.

"Yeah, this is sprained pretty bad," the medic looked up at me. "We should take you over to the hospital." I shook my head.

"I can't believe you walked on that," Pete laughed. I looked at it swollen. It looked gnarly and gross and was colorful in a horrible way.

"Just wrap it," I sighed and leaned my head back. "I have a date."

"We should get X-rays," she insisted, not moving to get the wrap. I glared at her and she went about her work finally. "Listen, I didn't mean to snap," I apologized quickly. "There are just a lot of people who need to be in the hospital more than I do." She had big hazel eyes. "And they see me in the uniform, and..."

"And they will be nice to you," she pretended to act appalled. I nodded quite seriously though.

I sat there and watched her work. She answered her radio. She looked for more supplies in the ambulance to take to a more critical patient.

"Hey, thanks for that in there," Pete slapped my thigh. I looked at him and remembered shooting someone behind him.

Clearing the train had been dreadful. I believed it was a miracle that we made it out, and I truly believed that. And the flashes were there every time I blinked. It was suddenly very clear that last night was the last semblance of sleep that I would have for a while. Because the woman in the blue coat was shot in the back. And the school girl was gasping for air. And the man had attacked one of the terrorists, and he was dead on the tracks. And I remembered us on the tracks checking his pulse. I'd seen too much.

"No worries," I cringed as the medic went to work on my foot. "We're going to be late," I worried. He nodded.

"That's the least of our worries," he stood again. I watched some of the team take off their gear and throw it into the truck.

"It's the only thing we need to think about now," I decided. "We all made it. A lot of people didn't." I swallowed.

"I don't know," he trailed off a bit. "It just doesn't seem like the right time."

"If we don't do this," I hissed slightly. "We will all probably hate ourselves. I will hate myself. Help me up," I held up my hand. "Let's go."

And with that I made him help me hobble to the truck. And we waited for everyone to get patched up stubbornly. I tried to call Holly, but I didn't get an answer. The ride back was silent. They helped me into the women's locker room and left me there. I made my way to the shower and cried with the warm water. I guess it wasn't a cry. It was warm water and sobs that racked my creaky chest. It wasn't even my ankle and the weight I continually forgot to avoid putting on it. I didn't know what it was. Perhaps it was the compartmentalizing or repressing. Maybe it was all of it, or remembering. Just remembering. That was what did it. That and the disconnect I felt to try to make myself be happy despite everything. It didn't make sense. So I sobbed in the shower and clawed at my chest so I could feel some of it. Any of it.

I'd learned to be all about the brave face. That wasn't what Holly meant when she told me to be brave. She meant to do my job, do it well, and do it courageously. And now look at me. So I allowed myself to cry. I just let the water pour over me because it made me disappear. And that was all I wanted for a few minutes, before I had to put on a dress and smile and assure Holly that I was alright. I allowed myself five more minutes to apologize and grieve and feel it before I would lock it away forever. Because there would be another call. And because I would be ready. This was all I needed. For just a moment. This break. And then I could do better next time.

So I dressed. I could put on a dress and pretend that I hadn't just done what I'd done. And we could raise money and drink and auction things to raise money for the children's hospital. Because that's what we did as cops. We did horrible things, and tried to make ourselves feel better.

"You clean up nice," Pete and a few of the guys whistled as I came out of the locker room. I blushed and punched them. "We're late." I straightened some of their ties. "Are you ready to switch?" He asked, helping me into the truck. I gave him a puzzled look. "You know, from work to play. You flip a switch and it's different." I nodded, finally understanding him.

Again we were silent. Fourteen hours ago we rode this exact truck to work, in vastly different attire and with vastly different motives. When I looked at their faces I saw how weary they were. I wondered if they did this for me or because they needed some humanity as much as I did.

When we arrived, it was considerably more empty than last years. Probably because of the need for cops on the scene. But here and there, amidst the spouses, were a few regulars.

It didn't take long for me to find Holly. She was stunning and such. And I was able to see the expanse of her back. And she redefined little black dress in the best kind of way. It made my throat dry. It made me remember to be alive.

"Wow," Pete whispered, leaning towards me. "You're lucky." I nodded, swallowing as if that would give me some sort of relief.

"Goodnight, Pete," I patted his chest and closed his mouth before hobbling towards her. It took longer than expected to walk over, but it hurt, and I was wearing sneakers and an expensive and tiny dress. I made it though, and savored the few seconds of watching her leaned by the bar, laughing with Chris and Andy. The way she held her glass. The way her hair was. It was like looking at someone and that someone made the world not so full of scary monsters.

"Hi," I greeted her finally, sliding beside her at the bar.

"Hey!" she hugged me fiercely. I closed my eyes and wanted to sleep. "You're okay," she sighed doing a preliminary account of any injuries. I nodded. I felt her hand on my forehead where I had a small cut. She looked at my wrapped foot and frowned, but put both her hands on my cheeks, squishing only slightly, but instead just holding it there. She stared at my eyes. I was too tired to look away. "You look beautiful," she decided. "You're my hero." I gulped, but couldn't. I felt like I the light bulb was out, and I was flicking the switch repeatedly, waiting for it to turn on, but instead, I was just flipping a switch to switch it for switching its sake. "And I am proud of what you did today."

"Thank you," I nodded. I heard everyone behind her talking about the day. They would have questions. I couldn't answer. Suddenly playing video games was a million years ago. "Can we get out of here?" I felt too hot to be here. I felt too bothered. I felt too uncomfortable. I was flipping the switch for all I was worth, but it was disconnected.

Holly nodded and we snuck out as best we could. She was quiet in the car. I was glad for that. When we got back to hers, she set me against the wall while she opened the door. Once inside, she helped me out of my dress. I helped her out of hers. And she laid me down. And she stroked my hair. And it all came out. I couldn't cry, but just stated facts instead. Holly listened in the dark while my ankle throbbed.

"I wish I knew what to say," she sighed. I nodded as my eyes drooped of their own accord.

"I don't think I can be near you anymore," I realized after telling her how horrible I was, and realizing how horrible I could be for her.

"Well that's too bad," she hummed.

"I mean it," I whispered, holding her tighter.

"No you don't," she explained.

"I don't," I sighed. That was unfortunate.

"I'm not going anywhere," she promised. "And I won't ever hate you."

"Okay," I nodded. "That's good. That's a start."

"I'll never be afraid of you," she kissed my forehead.

"That's good, too," I agreed. I couldn't let go. Her hands were in my hair and I felt tired.

"You're allowed to be scared," she whispered. "I think I love you, and that's terrifying." Her voice was quieter than quiet.

I nodded and fell into the deepest sleep.

* * *

**Chapter 9: Clownin' Around**

* * *

_My feeble heart was filled with wrath _  
_My poison mind with thoughts perverse._

"You've been quiet lately," Pete suddenly appeared beside me. I continued to breakdown my gun at the station. "Though no less beautiful." I shook my head. "And smart. And sunny. And full of childish mirth." He laughed, unable to keep a straight face at his description.

"What do you want," I sighed, discharging, and gathering my equipment. I was tired and going through the motions.

"Nothing," he casually followed as I opened the locker. "Just making sure you're alright. It's been a rough few weeks." I shrugged. "I've been busy, we haven't had a chance to catch up. You're my little sister. I have to make sure you're alright, you know?" I shrugged. I did that a lot. I was noncommittal.

More and more information was coming out about the attacks, and it didn't make me feel any better. There was no realistic reason given, and the only information about the group that we had was dated and irrelevant for the most part. But we did know that more attacks were promised. We were on a constant state of alert. I hadn't slept anywhere but the station in the past ten days. And that meant I hadn't slept. But I read the files and I spent my waking hours calling 15, and asking them to follow ideas I had. Mostly they told me to go to sleep. And when they did that, I called Holly and woke her up and she put a spell on me, and talked to me quietly, and when she was not even awake, and it allowed me a few hours of fitful sleep.

"You've been busy," he observed. "Haven't seen much of Holly around here." I understood where this was going. I shrugged, again. My shoulders were sore. "I mean, it was nice of her to drop off the cookies. The boys enjoyed that. But I haven't seen her for a bit. She was stopping by pretty good there, for a bit."

"She told me she loved me," I swallowed, but that didn't work quite right. My throat was dry. I sat on the desk when my gear was locked away and the range was quiet. I was unlike the rest of my team. When we weren't practicing they were at home with their families. "It got in my head."

"What?" he yelped slightly, before trying to regain passivity. "I mean, what, that's great. When?"

"A few weeks ago," I sighed. "I can't really be sure though. It was when we were falling asleep. I'm not sure if I made it up, or if it happened." He tapped his finger on his chin and stared at me appraisingly. "It's weird, right? I mean," I played with my hands. "That means you love someone. That means a lot. I love you. Those are words that have fucked up human history for centuries."

"Would it be the worst thing in the world if she did?" he ventured, following as I made my way into the hall. I was hot and sweaty and ready for a shower. I shrugged as I held the door for him. "And if you imagined it, that must mean you want to hear it, right?" I shrugged again.

"Things are hard," I murmured. "It's never that simple. I love you. You love me. We're happy. Things don't work like that."

"When I met my wife," he started, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "Let's just say I see a lot of myself, in you, in what you think." He only ventured a slightly glance while he stirred. I wiped some sweat from my forehead in my shirt and shook my head. I wanted a shower. "But I saw her," he went back to stirring. "And it wasn't a switch. I saw her and I was terrified. And then I had my kids, and I got even more scared." He paused to take a sip. "But you're young. Right now, you're trying to figure out how to be alive, and then you meet her," he was distant and smiling and staring. "And you see her, and the how becomes a why, and the how is hard enough, but they why is so simple that the how starts to overpower it."

"Listen, Pete, I don't-" I started slowly. He was having none of it.

"What I'm trying to tell you is," he cut me off. "Stop thinking. I could die tomorrow, even if I was a lawyer or mailman. And my kids would remember that I made them pancakes and that I loved them as hard as imaginable." I just stood and tucked my arms around myself. "Listen, I've done it. I sat at the bar for nights that turned into days and then weekends. But I met her, and it was a switch. And I worried that I wasn't what she needed. I tried not to be. But you can't help what you are to someone else. Being scared is the best thing that can happen to you."

"She's just..." I squeezed myself harder. "She has a family that has dinner every other week. And she reads. And she loves Christmas carols."

"And you don't?"

"I have a family who barely speaks to one another, let alone shares a meal unless it's mandatory," I scoffed. "I can focus and be good at things. Maybe I could be good at her, but at what cost? To me and to her?"

"There isn't a cost," he insisted. "That's where you're mistaking everything. Stop thinking," he hit my head gently. I wish he'd hit the thoughts from my head, but they were cancerous and stuck deep at the root. "And get out of here, for a bit," he gestured to the station. "You're becoming a fixture and that's not good." I nodded.

"Do you think your wife minds what we put her through on a daily basis?" I asked as I took a few steps away towards the shower. "I mean, not knowing, worrying, afraid of the phone, glued to the news." Pete stopped and thought for a moment, staring into his coffee.

"Yes," he nodded. "But I'd be dead a long time ago if it wasn't for her."

"Isn't that selfish?"

"No," he decided. "Because I come home and we are a family. How could that be wrong?" I nodded as if I understood, but I couldn't. With a sympathetic smile and wave, he made his way out into the snow-clad parking lot.

I showered and tried to digest what Pete maybe tried to tell me. I was not much good at figuring out what to do, even when I knew what I wanted to do. But I could shower. So I did that. I decided to schedule an appointment with the shrink of the department. And I did that from the locker room when I toweled off slightly. It was a grown up decision, but if I wanted to even think about trying to figure out... love... I swallowed and my head hurt at the simple notion of the word, I had to be a grown up.

I dressed and made my way outside after bundling up in my coat. The walk to the station of 15 division was a ways. It was cold, and the air in my lungs hurt, but it actually felt good to leave the station. And the ceiling of light white clouds seemed like an insulation, making sure the winter was sure to stay. The streets were lined with Christmas here and there. Lights strung in storefronts and trees in the park, all told everyone what time of year it was, and I found myself making notes of this and that. I had to think of what to get Holly. That was quite difficult. Because if I got her something, that was important, and I knew she would get me something, and it would be wonderful. All I genuinely wanted was to wake up near her on Christmas morning. I wondered if that was what love meant; if that was what she meant when she said she might love me, that she wanted to spend time with me for an indeterminable amount of time in the future. That she could tolerate me. That she could not care that I've killed living people. That she would still like me when I was mean to her.

"Hey, stranger," Andy greeted me with a big smile when I tried to sneak in through booking.

"Hey," I greeted her. "I just need to check on something with Frank," I lied.

"Sure, sure," she buzzed me back. "Everything alright?" I just nodded and walked down the hall.

I kicked my shoes against the steps as I made my way towards the lab. My coat dripped a bit from the cold and chunks of snow. But this time my feet weren't the things that got me here. This time I made a conscious decision. And it had been too long. I made two coffees to hold as my excuse and my shield.

I allowed myself just a minute of undiscovered gazing. Holly's hand moved quickly as she wrote. She was focused. She bit the end of her pen and read through her papers. Her desk looked serious. Her white coat made her look professional.

"Hi," I knocked on the door of her office.

"Hey," she looked up at me and smiled. There was that smile. I leaned against the door. "You look cold."

"It's cold out," I nodded.

"You've been scarce lately," she observed, setting down her pen and sitting back in her chair.

"You said you might love me," I shrugged and looked at the floor. "Not that those two facts are related."

"They seem related," she observed. I shook my head. I stared at her and registered that she moved only slightly, and in measured ways. She was near me and she gently led me into the office and closed the door. She hugged me, slipping her arms inside my coat. "You're stressed." I shook my head again.

"I'm just... I'm figuring it out," I decided. "And with everything that's happened."

"Okay," she pulled away slightly.

"I just came to see you, because I wanted to," I spit out awkwardly.

"Well that's a start," she laughed slightly. "Is this for me?" she looked at the cups I was still holding quite tightly. I nodded. "Thank you." She sipped her drink. We were quiet and sipping together. "So why'd you really stop by?" she eyed me over the lid warily. I shrugged. "Gail, can we just... I don't know. Can we just be happy together? Do you think?" I shrugged again. "Because I want you to come to Christmas Eve dinner. And I want to meet your mom. And I have plans... I mean, I'm planning on making these plans, but you're so far away." I swallowed and burned my throat. Maybe that was on purpose.

"Maybe I'm not who you think," I realized quite suddenly. It startled me. I felt it in my cheeks, it startled me all over. The epiphany that was the base of all of my fear. "I came here to tell you I missed you and kiss you. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm not what you need. I take too much. I'm doing my best," I gulped again and felt the burn in my intestines. "But the more I think about it, the more I don't fit into anything good or nice. I'm not damaged." I took a step away from her and stared at the ground. "Maybe I'm just not supposed to have that. I was genetically predispositioned and biologically constructed this way. You deserve better."

Holly stared at me. She quietly sat her cup on the table. I swallowed, or tried to, again. She pulled my move and shrugged. Her calmness bothered me.

"I don't care," she sighed, casually crossing her legs as she leaned on her desk. "I think I have a pretty good idea who you are, and that is why I let you come and go. That is why I sit here and watch your brain scurry about like a little mouse. That's who you are. You can defuse a bomb and know seven thousand and four ways to subdue an attacker from every angle and you can do math in your head before I can use a calculator, but you can't figure out how to be human. But I've watched you, and I know you. You have these things you've never had to deal with before, and you're doing it." I shook my head as hard as I could.

"I can't even say it," I was disgusted with myself. "I can't say those words. I don't think. You deserve better."

"You get to do this once," she stood again to kiss my cheek and zip my coat before settling back behind her desk. She looked pale and rattled. "Because I love you. God, sometimes I can't figure out why, I'll give you that, because you don't make it easy, but I do. Even now."

"I came to see you, because I wanted to," I repeated, tucking my hands in my pockets. "What do I do?" I stared at her finally. It was a legitimate question. She shrugged. "I'll see you later," I touched the door knob. "I'm really sorry I don't have my shit together."

"Be safe, Gail," she called behind me as the door closed.

I stood on the other side of the door, unable to move. Half of me wanted to turn around and kiss her. The other half wanted to run away and never look back. Most of me wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep forever. Some of me understood what was happening. None of me wanted to admit it.

I walked my way to the locker room, because all I wanted to do was sit there, and pay reverence to whatever it was I could. Luckily everyone was still out and I was able to sit quietly and stare at it. When I opened it, I found the papers I'd shoved in the bottom and forgotten when I decided I wanted to kiss Holly. I read it eagerly and realized I could still be the person I wanted to be. But even then, I wasn't sure it would be good enough. But I read. I read the things I wrote about who I wanted to be. Maybe Holly made me become more of that person. But the nagging suspicion that it was selfish wouldn't leave.

So I walked back to the station. I put my head down and let my ears freeze. I trudged through the wind that came off the lake. I kept myself warm with thoughts. Only thoughts. Every other muscle group went on auto pilot. I thought about playing video games with Holly. I thought about not playing video games with her. I thought about the thirty-eight days that I made myself stay away. I thought about how much I hated myself and why that was. But my feet kept taking steps and I kept berating my existence.

"What are you doing in, Peck?" Burton stopped me in the hall. I could feel the freezer burn on my cheeks.

"Just need to check something," I returned, heading into the locker room. I didn't stop, but kept going when he tried to talk to me.

I sat on the bench again and pulled out the papers. I read parts. I stared at the ceiling. I told myself I wanted to be proud. I told myself I wanted to be brave. I told myself that I should be compassionate. I told myself that I should feel things. Oliver actually told me that, but I echoed it. Maybe it wasn't the worst thing. Pete said it himself. What would happen if she said she loved me? She told me she did, and the sky didn't crash. So it was something else to all of that. I was the agonizing push and pull of every sinew in my body at the same time in an infinite amount of directions. I felt like I sometimes got closer to who I wanted to be. And sometimes I was no where in the ballpark.

I held my vest and I pulled on the patch. It was tight. I pulled as hard as I could until the fabric tore from the corner. I dropped the patch with my papers and traced the words that were there. It was a tiny prayer, in and of itself.

_Please, God, protect this creature, for she is good, and kind, and just.  
Bring her back to me, physically safe and I will heal her heart.  
Make her safe, and smart, and brave, and I will make her loved.  
Give her peace and grace, and I will make it quiet. I promise.  
Amen._

I stared at the words for a long time. And I understood why she did what she did. And I understood Pete's wife. But I didn't understand what it all meant. Because she wrote something you write about someone you want to come home, and I was that person, and no one had ever wanted me to come home so badly. And if I didn't? I would ruin her. I would ruin her completely, and I knew that. To have that power, that was what love was, and that was why I feared it so much. I shoved my vest into the locker and slipped the papers and patch into my coat.

The papers crinkled in my pockets when I left the locker room and returned into the snow. I trudged. I let my muscles burn in the cold. I walked the entire way home. And the streetlights didn't deter me as I found my way, the entire time, specks of myself chipped and ground against themselves.

"Gail, what are you doing here?" My mom asked as she answered the door.

"I am an incredibly mal-adjusted adult, and I blame you for sixty percent of that," I stared at her. It was fact. She chuckled slightly after regaining some composure.

"Won't you come in before you accuse you parents of ruining you?" she held the door open, but I shook my head. I could feel everything and nothing in the cold.

"Mom, I think I may love someone, and it's dreadful," I stood tall though. "And she loves me, I already know that. But I can't do it. I can't..." I gestured with my hands. "I can't let myself... be."

"Oh, so you're here to prove a point, then?" she crossed her arms flippantly.

"No," I sighed. "I just want to tell you that I think I am figuring it all out. But I can't. Sometimes I think I can't, and I blame you."

"I never thought you didn't," she shrugged. There it was. The genetics of cool.

"I just want to tell you, that I'm alright," I decided. "And I might love someone. But I might also push her away. And I'm terrified. And you're my mom and I feel like you put all of this into me and I want you to take it away." I remembered that Holly took away my nightmares. Maybe that was what love was. I could understand that. She prayed for me. You don't pray for people you don't love. I didn't even know how to pray.

"Please come inside," she insisted. "It's cold." I shook my head again. "Then listen. Don't push away something you love. It's that simple. For hell's sake, Gail. It's not a hard concept that you need to go running around in the cold for."

"Okay," I nodded to myself while puffing into my hands to improve circulation.

"Why don't you come in a bit? I want to hear about ETF," she opened the door a bit more. I shook my head again. "And this girl."

"You didn't want me to work there in the first place," I reminded her.

"Because it's dangerous," she reminded me. "Think what you will, but I don't want my daughter to be hurt." That was kind of a revelation for me. "Gail, I know things have been rough, okay?" she closed the door and stepped out into the snow with me on the porch. "You've had a hell of a first year with that department. But I'm very proud of what I'm hearing. You'll be running that place in no time." I rolled my eyes and shook my head. "So do you want to tell me why you marched over here on this frosty evening just to tell me how much I fucked you up as a child? It could have waited until a warmer day. Or even over the phone." I shrugged, fingering the patch in my pocket. She looked at me sternly.

"I was burning bridges today, so I thought this was an apt choice," I explained. "I don't know. I haven't slept. Things are rough. I'm confused."

"My goodness, you sound so much weaker than I raised you to be." I could feel her eyes on me even when I looked at the floor.

"Maybe I am," I agreed. "Maybe that's the other forty percent." I could latch onto that hope.

"You're the most unhappy person I've ever seen," she grabbed my shoulders. "Snap out of it!" she yelled in my face. "Take what you want. Earn it. Both are the same. But stop being so afraid. You can't even confront me with a spine." She let go of me and chuckled to herself. I swallowed the cold. I could feel it in my nodes.

"You're seriously the reason I am the way I am," I searched her face.

"Sixty percent," she reminded me. "But I won't even take that much credit. You come here, like a Salinger character, looking for what? For me to tell you that it's my fault? That you're weak. That it'll be alright? I don't know what you want, but neither do you, and that's the problem. I'm not making you push away whoever this girl is. I don't even know her. That's all you, and that's the part you hate. I only want you to be successful and happy, Gail."

"No... that's not..." I fumbled.

"You've lost your edge since you met her though," she observed, staring at me intently, hand on the door. We were quiet. I heard the wind in the trees in the neighborhood. I heard the tires on the sloshy street. Maybe I had lost my edge since I met her. Maybe that was the part that scared me. "Your father and I should expect you for Christmas Eve dinner, right?" she asked, opening the door. I felt the warmth seep out and into the cold. I shook my head.

"I have plans," I lied. She nodded and closed the door. I was deflated and elated at the same time. Though both were in slightly differing degrees.

I stood, looking at the door for a few minutes. Maybe it was longer. The sun was completely gone to bed, and I just stood in the dark, melting into the porch. I touched the papers and the patch and tried to warm my fingers before returning to the street.

The walk to Holly's apartment was dreadful. My nose ran. My lips chapped. My ears felt like they would break off, and all the while, I thought about it all. I wanted to remove myself from Holly, for Holly. But that didn't seem right. It was selfish to put her through so much. It was weak, to run away. My mother taught me that. It was weakness to not fight for what you wanted. But what I wanted was so fragile and complex, it was dangerous. But I could be happy, in ways. Maybe I was already happy. The unhappiness came from thinking. Holly deserved better, but I could be better. That was the point. She deserved someone who wouldn't die, so I wouldn't die. I couldn't, because she prayed for me. And when I built myself up, I tore myself apart when I remembered her eyes and her worry and how many times she had to take care of me, and I realized how unfair it all was to her. It was unjust that she fell in love with me in the first place. I was a cat. Getting into the tree was easy. Getting out of it was necessity.

When my knuckles meant Holly's door, I still wasn't sure what I was doing, but I wanted to have more spine than when I knocked on my mother's.

"Hi," I waved awkwardly when she answered.

"What are you doing here?" she sighed, leaning on the door. This was fight or flight.

"I think I might love you and I don't know what to do with it," I shrugged, nonchalant. Holly pulled me into her apartment and shut the door a second later.

"You're selfish and you're seriously a jerk!" she yelled as I sat on the couch like a child. She was pacing. "There are so many things I want to say to you!" she was angry. "I don't even know where to start. You can't just become part of someone's life and decide its too much. I wish you'd just grow up! I'm here! What else can I do?!" she was moving her hands about while she walked in front of me. Her hands were on her hips. She looked at me for an answer for just a second. "What can I do, Gail?" she asked again, still not waiting for an answer, which was good, since I didn't have one, realistically.

This was fight or flight, I reminded myself.

"I know I said there was no emotions, but that was just ridiculous. Of course there are emotions, you asked me to write on your vest. You come to me all bloody and broken and shattered, you know?" she asked me again. I opened my mouth, but she ignored it. "Of course there are emotions. I can't do the back and forth." She ran her hand through her hair and pulled. I don't think I'd ever seen her yell at me. "I've given you months. Months! to figure it out. I just want you. You think about all the junk that weighs you down, and you think it bothers me, but it doesn't. I feel like... with you I feel like I get to be better. I get to do better. I feel things and I think about things, but you don't care about that."

"I do," I whispered. She flopped on the couch. "But I'm worried because things are dangerous! I can't fix what is happening. We're just waiting for something else to happen, and you could be on the subway! You could be in a restaurant." It all came out in a wave. "I don't know how to be in a relationship with you. I don't know how to do it. And I don't want to hurt you because I think that might be the worst thing I could ever do."

"Stop!" she screamed. "I don't care! I want to be with you, I choose it. And I feel stupid, because here I am, and all you want to do is leave. So either come or go."

She stared at me.

"I think I might love you," I looked at my hands. "And I definitely don't know what to do."

"That doesn't mean a whole lot if you're leaving," she shrugged. I wondered if it was catching. I fished in my jacket and handed her the patch of fabric.

"Yeah," I nodded. "But what if I decided to stay?" I asked bravely. "I mean, what if I tried?"

"Things would be like they were before," she shrugged again, staring at the fabric in her hands. "But I'd have expectations, and so would you."

"I can do that," I nodded.

"You can't leave anymore," she was nodding to herself and folding the patch on her knee.

"Alright," I agreed again.

"And just stop thinking," she decided.

"Okay," I nodded. We sat there gazing at each other. She chewed her lip. She measured me.

"I swear to God, Peck," she rested her cheek on her hand. "You better make up your mind." I gave her a smile.

"I don't think I have a choice," I shrugged.

"I'm not going anywhere," she stared at the patch on her knee.

"I think I can handle that," I stared at her, looking fondly at her knee. "I think." She chuckled.

"I have to put this back on," she sighed.

"I already read underneath," I offered. She nodded to herself. "I'm sorry I'm a jerk," I whispered. She cracked a smile. "Ask me again," I took off my coat.

"Ask you what?" she cocked her head. Her eyes were still glassy and she looked tired.

"If we can just be happy together," I prompted her. She smiled despite herself.

"Well?" she asked. "Can we?"

"I'm not sure," I nodded to myself. "But I'm going to try really hard." I saw the flight and the fight on her face. She met my eyes, shook her head, and laughed. "No, I mean it. I can be in this. I want to be a good person. I want to be in this. I am deciding right now!" I yelled up at the sky. "I choose to be happy!"

"Well, if it's that easy," she shrugged. "I choose to be happy, too!" she yelled at the ceiling.

"Alright, I guess we're doing it," I was terrified, but didn't want to show it. If I could decide to be miserable, I could find a spine now. "Now what?"

I think that was the real question, and that was one neither of us had an answer for.

* * *

**Chapter 10: Quiet Little Voices Pt 1**

* * *

Quite Little Voices Pt. 1

_I'll fall for you.  
I'll fall for you.  
I'll fall for you.  
I'll fall for you._

"Well, her family treats me really well," I adjusted my feet, crossing and re-crossing them on the edge of the couch. The ceiling was speckled and sometimes I tried to make constellations about of the dots. "For Christmas Eve dinner, her mom sent me home with the leftover pie because I said it was the best I'd ever had. And her brother pulled me aside to thank me for the video game we gave him because Holly would have never picked it. But then he said I wasn't allowed to hurt her. So it made me a bit nervous."

"This is her younger brother, Noah?" Dr. Sullivan asked. I nodded, even though she could only see the top of my head from her seat on the other side of the room. "What do you think that means?"

"I'm not sure," I shrugged, fiddling with the sweater I'd worn that Holly's mom gave to me for Christmas. It was warm and slightly itchy, but homey at the same time. "He must love his sister, to protect her."

"You don't think your brother would do the same?" she furthered.

"He has," I sighed. I closed my eyes. "But I guess what I'm saying is I might be a bit attached to her family. And her. I think I'm attached to her."

"That makes sense, though, doesn't it?"

"I don't know," I snapped. "Isn't that what you're supposed to tell me? And then tell me what I'm supposed to do next. Your little assignments make me feel ridiculous." I heard her chuckle slightly.

"I think you're afraid to disappoint them, and Holly," she began. I crossed my legs again, and my arms across my stomach. "If they're attached, to use the word you did, then they have expectations of you. You're afraid of expectations."

"You really cut right in there, huh, Doc?" I tilted my head to try to look at her. She shrugged her head with a nod.

"Tell me about how things are going in your life," she ignored me. "I saw you once before the holidays, and you seemed anxious. I know you had a call on the third, right?" I nodded. "The group again?" I nodded again and rolled my eyes. I tucked my hands into the opposite sleeves so I could grab myself. "You seemed upset by them before, and you seemed distressed by Holly and your mother."

"And all of that, you can't figure out why I might be a bit anxious?" I took a deep breath and settled into the couch. At least it was comfortable. That helped.

"I can see a stressful vein there, yeah," she acknowledged. "Tell me why you freaked out."

"I wish I hadn't told you that part," I looked at the mock constellations quietly for a few minutes. I'd learned that I was allowed to be quiet. Dr. Sullivan said it was so I could think about what to say. I just sometimes didn't want to talk, but sit on the very comfortable couch for a few minutes where I didn't have anything else to do in the world. "I thought I wouldn't be good for her. I mean, look at me," I gestured to the fact that I was on a shrink's couch. "I didn't want to be someone's burden."

"I can understand that, Gail," she egged me forward. "But you tried to make a decision for someone else, and that never works." I shrugged.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"So you told her you couldn't be with her?" she wanted me focused. I nodded. "And she told you it didn't matter." I nodded still. "And you saw her prayer." I nodded. "And what?"

"It made me feel loved," I swallowed heartily even though I didn't feel the need. "Whenever I feel that... or when things are going well... they crap out, you know? I wanted to crap out before she could crap out on me. I think. It was cowardly."

"Now, why is it cowardly to be afraid?" she stopped me.

"Well, it's right there in the definition," I gave her a condescending look on accident.

"It sounds like you were protecting yourself, and that's not cowardly," she leaned forward a bit.

"It doesn't matter," I turned again to the ceiling. "I decided to be happy, and so I let myself be afraid of it all disappearing."

"Are you still afraid?" I heard her writing ferociously. I shrugged. "Do you think you made the right decision?"

"Oh yeah," I grinned. "My grandpa once told me you would know a decision was really truly right if it was the hardest thing you've ever done."

"A wise man," she agreed appreciatively.

"I think that's what Pete was trying to tell me, in his own, convoluted way," I turned to look at her to see if she understood what I meant. As far as shrinks were concerned, I gave her a harder time than she deserved.

"How's work?" she seamlessly moved us along. It made me feel as if I was on the right track then, with Holly. That I understood what I had done.

"It's work," I made the horrible joke. I crossed my legs once more. "It's been calm, I guess. Nothing as stressful as the others. A raid here and there. I haven't had to shoot my gun, so there's that."

"That's something," she seemed positive at that. "And sleeping? How do you do?"

"It's hit or miss," I told the truth. I had to tell the truth now.

"How many nights are you alone?" She knew the hard questions. I thought for a bit.

"Depends. Over the holiday it wasn't often," I was still truthful. "Now, maybe four nights per week."

"What are you doing, in your daily life, to keep calm and less anxious? We talked about a few techniques, and trying to locate what really bothers you..."

"I dunno," I sighed again. This babble felt ridiculous. "I have lots of sex." She laughed. "I stop worrying about things I can't control."

"Really?"

"No," I told the truth. "I mean, I try to, at least. I try to not get overwhelmed. Like, this sounds stupid, but I just try to think of myself as two people. And who I was before, I can sort of pick the things I didn't like and I want to slowly change them."

"So you put less pressure on yourself to get 'fixed'?" I heard the air quotes in her words. I nodded.

"And what about work?"

"I try to be alive," I took Oliver's phrasing.

"And in your relationships?"

"I try to be someone I would want to be around," I crossed my legs and hugged myself again.

"Meaning?"

"I don't know," I sighed and closed my eyes again, resting my forearm over them. "I try to be someone who is good. Like, I helped Traci by babysitting last week. I helped Holly's sister make treat bags for her daughter's class party. I guess I want to be someone that people count on, so I decided to be available."

"That's a great idea," she instilled it. "You just can't overwhelm yourself trying too hard. Eventually you have to realize that you're not acting, and you do much of those things you think define a good person, quite naturally." I took a deep breath and took my arm off of my face.

"Yeah, that's the trick," I agreed. "You know what bothers me though?" I sat up suddenly. She waited for me to continue the thought. "Holly was able to just... love me, you know? She just said it." I tried not to have this confused look of disgust on my face. "Even when I was all full of holes and drunk and usually horrible and unreliable. I mean, she told me she loved me, but there wasn't anything lovable there." I held my cheeks in my hands which were propped on my legs. I was hunched and confused. "And she stuck it out for me to try to get my head out of my ass. How does that happen? I still can't even say it to her."

"Does she say it to you?" I shook my head.

"I think we decided to wait, maybe. I don't know. She doesn't say it. We haven't talked about it. I think I scared her, maybe." Dr. Sullivan took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes before settling back on me.

"I think you should stop putting emphasis on one word. Actions," she decided, closing her folder. "Those are more important. And you just told me about how you helped her clean her office on a Saturday even though you didn't want to. And you won't admit it, but I suspect you actually are pretty thoughtful." I shook my head. She chuckled. "Maybe she loves you because you're simply you, Gail," she tried another topic. "There's no reason. But I'm fairly certain that if you ask her, she might give you a few. Not everyone is like your mother and you have to earn their love. Some people just give it freely and eagerly."

"Those people are freaks," I snorted. She nodded seriously.

"I think you're dating one of those though," she shrugged.

"Yeah," I heaved a heavy breath. "Something like that."

"I think that's all for us this week, Gail. I hope to see you next week, at the same time, if it works for you?" she stood and I followed.

"Yeah," I agreed less than enthusiastically. "I can do that. Do you know how many more of these I need?" I looked at her hopefully as I followed her towards the door. She laughed and tucked hair behind her ears.

"It's not about needing them, Gail," she opened the door for me. "You can come five hundred more times. You can never come back. It's about making a change for yourself. I'm just a springboard for your ideas or rants. I'm not going to diagnose you or anything."

"Okay," I nodded. She held out her hand and I shook it. "Thanks, I think."

"I'll see you next week, and don't you try to cancel," she had stern eyes now too. I nodded sheepishly. Maybe that was what I needed in my life. Stern eyes. They got me every time. Maybe it was just Holly's stern eyes. Those worked miracles.

I grabbed my coat from the stand and slipped it on by reception as I set another appointment at the desk. When I stepped out into the January air it felt familiar and nice. Most people complained about the cold. It was refreshing. It wasn't stale. It was alive and terribly sad, but it made you feel. It made your blood valuable, and I liked that. I liked Holly's blush. I liked her mittens. I liked winter.

Two meetings under my belt, and I felt better. That had a lot to do with life, as well. I think the last call we got, how stressful it was, and the fact that I went home and had dinner with Chris, Dov, Chloe, and Holly kind of made it all okay. I reacted in the right way. I think. And I spent Christmas with Holly. We drank with our friends. We stayed in, the morning of, and opened presents half naked, and it was the best Christmas of my life. Her parents were sweet. Her family was adorable. And we still had hiccups, but we talked. I tried to speak. And she let me be quiet, sometimes. But I was less afraid. I think half of that was because of Dr. Sullivan. Maybe thirty precent. Because I was busting my ass off not thinking and just being who I wanted to be. And though I wanted to be wary of how good things were going, and how healthy and whole I felt, I didn't. I decided that I could be happy as long as I wanted. That was they key. That and kissing Holly. That and her bum in those cute pairs of underwear. That and watching movies with her. That and playing paintball with the rookies. That and teaching Dov fighting techniques sometimes after work. That and going to the Penny and singing karaoke with Traci. That and taking everyone to Holly's hockey games. That and a million other things that didn't have to be stressful.

And for all of those reasons, plus the snow on the ground, I felt, not happy, so much as contented, and I was learning that that was what it was about. Contented and fulfilled. That was where the money really was.

"Stewart!" I called into the lab as I turned the corner. She jumped and that made me smile. "I've come to take you to an early lunch." I boasted like a ruler. Magnanimous and grandeur included.

"You scared me," she furrowed her brow over her safety glasses and put the saw she was wielding on the shelf of other medieval looking tools. I gave her a face. She looked at her watch. "How was your appointment?" She put her glasses on the table next to a body. That part still grossed me out.

"Good," I vaguely offered, hands dug into my pockets. I watched her wash her hands and put her coat neatly on the hook where she always did. "We talked about things. I have a standing appointment, I think."

"That's great, hun," she leaned towards me and kissed me. I wanted to pull my hands from my pockets but they were deep and stuck and oddly clutching the inside there. I kissed her back. She tucked a bit of hair behind me ear. "When are you due into work?"

"Not until later," I assured her, extending my elbow for her to take so I could promenade with her to the diner across the street. "Where are your mittens?" I asked as she slipped on her coat and joined me. She frowned.

"I left them at home," she sighed. I liked how sad she was over that fact. That says something about a person who feels things. I held her a bit closer and let her put her hands in her pockets instead of holding them. I didn't want her fingers to fall off.

"So tell me about the cat on the table," I held the door for her as we bolted into the snow

That triggered Holly to start describing the investigation she was working on and the science behind the nucleotides of this doohickey or that whatsit. And I payed attention. I truly did. It was just Greek to me. But I liked watching her explain it and the sound of her voice in the crowd of the diner. I liked that she wore the necklace I got her for Christmas. I was not a shopper. I was actually almost morally opposed to it. But it was simple, and it was easy, and it was less practical than the other random gifts I got her. It was something I was able to sneak under the tree and let her open and her eyes got big and glassy and it was for a good reason this time, I thought.

When she ordered her lunch, she absently played with the little heart there. It made me smile when I ordered mine. It made me lean forward and kiss her too, right there in the middle of the diner for anyone to see. I didn't care. That was growth, I suspected.

"Emily wants us to go to hers for family dinner next week," she mentioned as we ate our lunch. "But it's so far," she groaned, stealing a fry from my plate nonchalantly.

"Markham isn't that far," I corrected her. She rolled her eyes. "It's not," I assured her.

"I just hate driving out there," her shoulders slumped.

"Why not have it at your brothers?" I laughed, taking a bite of my sandwich. She joined me.

"Right, can you picture all... what is it..." she counted, "Emily and dave, the three kids, Mom and Dad, Noah, you, me. All ten of us in his studio?"

"It could be nine," I offered. "I can't impose."

"Ha!" she balked. "Like my family would let you bail." I shrugged. "You're in too deep now, Peck," she gave me big eyes and a jovial smile.

"That's alright, just more to talk about with Dr. Sullivan," I teased.

"You're hilarious," she shook her head and stole another fry.

And that was how lunch went. That's how the past month had gone, in degrees. Granted, the first few days after I told Holly I might love her were rough, and awkward, but that was mostly me. Then we settled and eased. And I wanted to say that things were better. Pete mentioned I seemed happier. That was a step. Oliver said he barely recognized me at the bar, smiling. Those were little things that made me feel better. And then Holly. I wished I had the emotional capacity to tell her that I fell in love with her more every day, but that was like, black belt level, and I was an emotional yellow. If that. Maybe purple on a good day. I could have given her reasons, just like Dr. Sullivan said she might be able to give for me. But mine would be better. Mine consisted of things like her mittens, and the way she had to stop at florists and smell the flowers and touch the petals, and how she looked at puppies in windows, and the way she moved through a bookstore even when I whined about how boring it was and she gave me a lecture about broadening my horizons, and when she laughed a huge, wide open, full mouth laugh at the dinner table, and the way she held her wine glass, around the glass, not the stem, and close to her chest because she was clumsy and knew she would spill, and the way she burrowed into my side when she was cold, and the way she touched my face to make sure all was accounted for, and the sounds she made when I touched certain spots, and that dip in her spine, and the way she made grilled cheese, and much more.

"I have to say," Holly sighed, leaning into my side as we slowly walked up the block to cross the street, taking the long, exaggerated route back to the lap. "A surprise lunch date is kind of a good way to start the week."

"I aim to please," I grinned.

"You're spoiling me, Peck," she sighed. Her arm curled harder around my own.

"Isn't that the point of dating?" It was a serious question but she laughed. "I'm serious. You take care of me, a bit. Quite a bit, actually. I can buy you crappy diner food."

"Aw, you really know how to romance a girl, huh?" she squinted her face when I kissed her forehead.

"I've read things," I joked. "On the internet. You can learn anything."

We waited for the light to change. Holly shivered. I smelled in the cold, crispness. I was in love with that. It made my nostrils sting, but it was a wonderful kind of feeling. My ears were cold. I felt the only heat in my body in the core, and I liked it there, centralized and ready for emergencies.

"You know, I've been thinking about it," she started as we walked. "And I think I may have someone for Duncan."

"For who?" I was confused.

"McBride," she reminded me. I was used to last names. "The last time I stopped by he was telling me about his ex, and he had a doozy of a time with her. But I ran into my old colleague at the last court appearance I had, and I got to thinking."

"How do you know my teammates first names?" I was stuck on that.

"I'm not going to call him McBride, Peck," she sassed.

"Right, because that would be ridiculous."

"Anyway," she continued. "I need you to suss it out a bit."

"You want me to do matchmaking recon work?" I groaned, holding the door open once again for her.

"Yes," she nodded quite eagerly.

"Nope," I shook my head. "I'm not getting involved. They were involved enough with our relationship."

"What?" she nearly shrieked. Oops.

"I just mean that they all had enough opinions about us and what I should do and how much they liked your butt," I clarified.

"Right," she rolled her eyes and hung up her jacket on the hook. "What else was there?" she asked, standing close to me on accident. I stayed in the doorway.

"You know," I shrugged. "I told you."

"Remind me," she hooked her finger in the collar of my shirt and tugged a bit. I would have given her my teeth right from my mouth if she'd asked.

"They said I was an idiot if I didn't make you my girlfriend," I leaned a bit into her tug.

"Wise men," she decided, kissing my cheek. "That's why I bake them cookies."

"Ah, bribery," I let her kiss me now.

"It works, occasionally," she pressed her body onto mine. It was warm, and I felt the blood in my extremities. She kissed me softly. It was quiet, there. Her finger pulled on my shirt, and I followed it, leaning closer to her. I felt her lips and I felt her tongue and I felt dizzy with it all. And that was wondrous. Until she wasn't kissing me anymore. "Your phone," she grumbled, leaning against the wall.

I checked the blinking screen and suddenly all of the warmth was gone. I dialed quickly and shut the door.

"Where are you, Peck?" Pete answered.

"In 15," I whispered. Holly gave me a weird look. "The basement morgue and lab."

"Well fuck," he grunted. "Stay quiet."

"What's happening?" I asked, peeking through the blind on the door. I shut off the lights.

"They attacked 15 division," he explained. I heard him yelling to the others, explaining where I was. "They're in there now. The same group."

"Tell Burton I might just sit tight then and wait for you guys to come to me," I motioned for Holly to stay quiet.

"Good plan," Pete agreed. "Listen, we have thirty men, at least. Hostages are rounded up in the parade room."

"How many cops up there?" I propped a chair against the door.

"Not enough," he sighed. "Sit tight, okay? We're coming. All teams are coming. Cops are surrounding it. We know they've taken lives already." I imagined my friends, dead. And I hated it. I was angry. "You're going to be alright, okay Gail?" I thought about the stores of ammo and guns here. I was sick.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Be safe out there."

"You too," he ended the call quickly. I stared at it for a split second before looking about the office.

"We have to find somewhere for you," I searched.

"What's happening, Gail?" Holly was worried and grabbing my arm. I hushed her. "What is happening?" she whispered more firmly.

"That group. The subway and hotel group," I gulped. "They've attacked 15."

"But we were just up there," she insisted. I nodded. "They can't... They won't come here, right?" I shook my head.

"But in case, we're going to stow you somewhere, okay?" She started to protest. "Please, Holly," I held her cheeks, I stared at her, I begged. "For me, we're just going to put you somewhere safe, okay? It's a silly precaution." I heard noises above us. She jumped.

"And you too?" she asked. "You're not going out there, right?" I shook my head.

"Help is on the way. Gibson and McBride and everyone you make treats for knows that you're here, and they won't let anything happen to us, okay?" I nodded so she would nod. I kissed her forehead.

"I'm scared," she whispered as I continued to look around.

"Don't be, darling," I assured her. "I'm here." She nodded weakly. "I'm scared too," I lied. "But we'll be fine, okay?" She nodded. "What about these?" I opened some of the drawers for the cubbies where the bodies went. I pulled an empty stretcher out.

"You want me to get in there?" she stared at me as if I were crazy. I nodded. The noises grew louder. "I can't."

"Holly," I grabbed her shoulders. We didn't have time. "Get on the stretcher." I gave her my stern look. It was unrehearsed, but still effective. I helped her climb onto it. "No matter what you hear, no matter what happens, you do not make a sound, do you hear me?" I stood over her while she laid there, nodding. Her hand was grasping my shirt at the collar. I kissed her. "Keep my phone. Text Gibson where you are, okay? He will let you know that it is him, okay?" She nodded with each okay.

"What about you?" she sat up a bit.

"I'm going to be a doctor, for once," I nodded towards her coat. "They won't hurt a doctor. They want bureaucrats." She nodded again as if her life depended on it. "Don't be afraid, darling. Be safe, be smart, be brave," I told her, kissing her as best I could. She smiled and held me tight still. The noises grew. "I love you," I whispered, kissing her forehead and pushing the stretcher into the cubby and closing the door as quickly as I could.

Suddenly it was very quiet. I slid into her white coat and put scalpels in my pocket. I swallowed. I felt my heart in my throat. I hoped she would know that I lied to protect her. That I knew they were methodical and trained and would check every room. I hoped I could tell her that one day, but mostly I just wanted her to know that I did it to protect her.

"Clear," I heard that from the room across the hall a second before the door behind me was banged open. "Who are you?" the deep voice shouted.

"I'm just..." I started, turning around slowly. "I'm just a pathologist," I held my hands up.

"Upstairs," he nudged his head, looking about the room to see if I was alone. I took that opportunity to stab him in the throat. Blood covered Holly's coat, but I didn't think she would mind.

It was the second guy that surprised me. I hadn't thought of that.

I remember that I felt very cold, again, and the distinct pops of gunfire were very far away. My mouth tasted like blood and I smiled, remembering Oliver's face when he realized I was fine. I was fine. He was right, I could be fine. You just have to figure out what to live for. I couldn't move. I saw the dark blob of a figure leave. I felt colder than standing on the corner.

I coughed.

And that was that.

* * *

**Chapter 11: Quiet Little Voices Pt 2**

* * *

Quiet Little Voices Pt. 2

_I'll die for you.  
I'll die for you.  
I'll die for you.  
I'll die for you._

She told me to stay in the cubby. That was clear as day. What she hadn't counted on was the smell that infected my throat and made me want to vomit. It was familiar formaldehyde and full of foreboding. Or the incredibly minute space I had to try not to react to with any noise. I was smothered and caged and I understood what lions, with their whining and groaning, rubbed against the bars of their enclosures. But that was a chore. That was miserable. Despite the fact that my body was too tense to move. That was not nearly as bad, however, as not knowing what was happening just outside. I was startled by that. I was nervous and shaking because I didn't know what would happen after she closed the door.

I could feel my body shaking when I texted Peter. My fingers hit every button. And then the shots that were so close I had to shove my shirt in my mouth to keep quiet. I recalled all of that hours later when someone pried Gail's phone from my white-knuckled grip.

The one thing I couldn't pinpoint was the fear. It was there, obviously. But it was different. It wasn't an 'I'm scared of going to the dentist,' or something, but was this fight or flight moment that left me paralyzed for just long enough to realize what might have happened. It made me shut my eyes so tightly it hurt my head. And all I could think about was Gail. And that paradoxically left me both terrified and braver.

If Gail could be brave, I could be brave. She was the bravest person I knew, even without thinking about it. It was natural. I was not that brave, but I could fake it for a bit. Maybe that's what bravery is, if you really think about it. Just people pretending until they don't have to anymore.

Slowly, I cracked open the cubby door, peeking as best I could at everything in the dark room. I listened, straining my entire body to use every muscle and drum in my ear. I held my breath, even, my lungs straining as I waited as long as I could. Gunshots went off above us, and I assumed that meant that they cleared the lab level.

As quiet as I could, I tried to sneak out, even though Gail told me not to. I hoped she wouldn't be mad. But there was a feeling in my gut that I couldn't ignore. And I couldn't sit in the cubby any longer.

I wasn't sure if I wish I'd stayed inside the cubby, though, when I saw her there. It looked like there was more blood outside of her than inside her. And that wasn't how it was supposed to be. I knew how it was supposed to be. The body beside her contributed to the blood. He was dead. The red smears on her pale skin made it worse, I think. My shaky hand struggle to touch her forehead, touch her cheek, make it better.

"Be alive," I whispered, rushing to her. "God, come on. Give me this," I seethed through gritted teeth as I tried to find a pulse. "Gail, Gail, Gail," I chanted, rubbing her face. "Please. It's okay. You're going to be okay," I nodded to myself as I found a weak heartbeat. "Please, God," I begged and prayed and bargained.

There were too many holes to fix.I didn't even know where to start. I laid atop her to apply pressure. I listened to her heartbeat. Her blood soaked into my clothes and skin. I kept my hand on her pulse and dialed 911.

"I need a medic," I shouted into the phone. I heard more gunshots upstairs. I wasn't sure where my breath came from, just like I wasn't sure where my breathing came from, but I did both, despite it all.

"Where are you and what's the nature of the emergency?" the operator asked, calmly. It insulted me.

"I'm at division 15, and there's gunmen and my girlfriend's been shot," I related as quickly as I could. "I have a pulse. It's bad. We need medics, now," I begged. "Please, please send someone quickly."

"Ma'am, please stay calm," they urged me soothingly. I clung to Gail.

"She's dying!" I yelled again.

That feeling of weakness and ineffectiveness, I will never forget for as long as I live.

"We don't know that," Steve squeezed my hand. I blinked and saw the seats of the waiting room. I saw the many agents, some still in gear, pacing, leaning, squatting, praying, waiting. I stood still in the same spot I'd been in since they told me to get off of her body. I was rooted because I couldn't move, but also because I wanted to see the doctor as soon as he was out of surgery. I swallowed and wiped my chin. I was still covered in blood. My body was not shaking so much as it was vibrating, perhaps even shivering.

"She's dying," I whispered this time. My chest felt like it was under an elephant's foot. My ribs jutted into my lungs. My sternum cracked. My scapulas dented. My clavicles fissured and fractured and bet. I became concave with the realization. "Please, God," I managed. Steve squeezed my hand again. I wasn't religious. But I had a Catholic mother, and those things just fill up your brain for times like this. Maybe I was religious. After this though, after the doctor came out, I would either know for sure that I was or completely shift to the agnostic side. That felt like spiritual bribery, as if my soul was up for grabs depending on if I got what I wanted, and for now, I was alright with it.

"Let's have a seat," he offered sweetly. His eyes were droopy. He needed to shave. He gave me a slight tug in the direction. "You've been standing here for hours," he reminded me. I only swayed, but did not move. No one looked at me anymore. I was the wall.

I looked at my feet and remembered they were there. My clothes were tinted deep burgundy, and grew crisp and crinkled under the drying of it all. I swallowed my sick in my throat and it hurt.

"Can I get you anything?" he offered. I shook my head. "I'm going to go check on Frank, alright?" he stood in front of me so I would see him. I nodded, not looking. Steve Peck hugged me tightly and rubbed my hair, my matted, dense and impenetrable hair, as if that would help. "She will be fine." I didn't have it in me to nod.

I was not alone long. I was not fully alone at all, when I looked about the waiting room. But I felt it when I stood there, standing behind the red line that separated visitors from victims.

"Come on, Gail," I whispered.

I kissed her cheek. I kissed her shoulder. I pushed myself into her so she wouldn't bleed. I strained my ears again to listen for her breathing. "I love you," I cried into her shoulder. "I love you I love you I love you," I chanted. "Breathe!" I yelled, pumping her chest slightly. "Don't stop. I know you can hear me," I was grinding my teeth. "Don't you dare die. You're not allowed. That was the condition. That was the only reason I could do this." I told her things. I was angry at her. "Don't do it. I will make everything better. I will never let anything hurt you. I promise," I squeezed and pushed myself into the ground. "You're not allowed."

"Who the hell are you?" a gruff voice startled me. I sat up only slightly to see the man with a gun.

"My name is Holly," I stated. "And I would kill you right now if I could move!" I yelled at him. "You did this!" I accused him. I held her tighter. I closed my eyes and dropped my forehead to her neck. Maybe it was the adrenaline. I didn't care if he killed me at this point.

When I heard the gunshots, I'd expected to be dead. That would have made sense.

"Holly!" Peter touched me and I yanked myself away from him.

"I'm holding her together," I explained. I couldn't cry any longer. "We need a medic." I heard him look around. "I'm holding her together!" I insisted harder.

"They're coming," he promised. He took off his helmet, he placed his jacket under her head. "I told her to take cover," he worried quietly.

"She hid me," I gulped. I felt her chest heave and she gargled on blood in her throat.

"She's stubborn," Pete reminded me. He didn't try to touch me. I was thankful for that. "You always hope that you never have to be here," he began after taking a sip from his coffee. He still had his uniform on, like the other guys. "But it happens." I looked at him finally. My throat was sore. My face felt like it had seven layers of nasty on it. I didn't care. My eyes wouldn't open the whole way. My glasses were filthy. "We're here, with you, Holly," he cleared his throat. He scratched his head. "All of us. We're here." He surveyed the guys in their chairs. He looked at the police milling about, and I, too, looked at each of them and could only wonder if Gail knew how many people worried about her.

"Thank you," I told him weakly. He gave me a small smile. But these people didn't want to lose the person they slept beside anymore than I did. The only difference was my person was cut open right now and looked like swiss cheese.

"My wife is on her way over. I told her to call your family," he rubbed his arm awkwardly. I nodded. "And Gail's parents are on the way." That was almost like a warning. "We could sit down, for a bit," he offered. I shook my head. "Or we can stand here," he nodded again, his tall, lanky frame leaning against the wall just a step behind me.

"Yeah," I agreed. "We can stand here." I stared at the door again, willing Gail to walk through it. My knees shook. But we both had purpose.

Pete and I stood there for another hour. Until his wife arrived, wielding snacks and drinks for everyone in the waiting room. She brought Pete a change of clothes and told various others that their wives or girlfriends were on the way. It seemed like a well-oiled machine. She hugged me tightly, despite my appearance.

"Don't worry, honey," she pushed hair from my face. "The troops are on the way," she assured me. "I told your family you'd call them later. It's impossible to move around the city right now." I nodded. "But I'm sure as things calm down, we can call them to come down, okay?"

"Thank you," I offered.

"Would you like something to eat?" she took Pete's spot when he wondered off to change. She fussed over this and that on me. I shook my head. "I've done this, before," she sighed. "I waited." She paused and fiddled with her purse. "Gail is a good person," she observed. "It's almost like she doesn't know it," she chuckled a bit. "But she is, and she will come out of this, Holly."

"I know," I agreed eagerly, nodding ferociously. "I know that."

"Good," she decided. "I brought you a change of clothes," she pulled some from her bag. "Pete said you were pretty dirty. They have showers in the nurses' lounge I'm sure we could borrow. It's not much, but some of Pete's old sweats might fit you until we can swing by your place and get some." She held pants up to my waist. She was short, only coming up to under my chin. She had a mousy face, but it fit her, because she was kind of tiny and cute and earnest.

"I can't," I stood a bit straighter. She nodded.

"Where is she?" I heard a voice bellow from around the corner. "Where is my daughter!" It was Superintendent Peck. She never told me to call her Elaine, the one time I met her. "I will not calm down!" she yelled, hitting the desk. "Where is she?" I watched the poor nurse scrambling. She was boiling. She was motherly wrath wrapped in ferocious fear.

"Superintendent," Susan began meekly. "She's in surgery. We haven't had an update for about an hour. They said it might be a while more in surgery. "

I watched Elaine Peck look back at me with Gail's eyes. She looked paler than pale. I realized I looked like everything that was supposed to be inside her daughter. Her brow furrowed and her jaw set.

"No," she sighed. "No no no no no," she was shaking her head. She brought her shaking hands to cover her mouth. "No," she begged. We stared at each other, both unsure of what to do next. Before I could decide, she was hugging me tightly, arms choking my neck. My arms lifted, slightly, wanting to hug her back. Softly, they finally did. I heard her sniffle, but I did not hear her cry.

"She'll be fine," I promised, hugging her back. I felt her nod. Gail would be strong at a moment like this. She would not cry. She would tell everyone that it was going to be alright and there was nothing to worry about because she strived in moments like this.

"Look at you," she pulled away, straightening her uniform. "Are you alright, Holly?" she stared at me intently. She was analyzing. I nodded. "What happened?" I shrugged. I wished I could recall for her.

"Let's get you cleaned up?" I wavered, then nodded. There was no room for arguing, and I didn't think I had enough fight left in me for it if there was. She gave me motherly eyes. "Let us know if anything happens, alright?" she looked right at Peter. He nodded. "And I expect Agent Burton to be here, ready to explain everything when I get back." There it was.

She walked me towards the lounge, carrying Susan's change of clothes. She turned the water on for me, checking the heat. I stripped and climbed in, allowing the warmth and water to wash away the blood on every inch of my body. The floor of the shower turned red. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, digging my nails into the skin. I braced myself against the wall with my hands and tried to catch my breath. That became exceedingly difficult. But I did. Gail was brave and strong. I could be brave and strong. She was the bravest and strongest person I knew. I was the lanky, gawky kid who couldn't walk without tripping, still, even as an adult. And she was the all-american.

"I just threw those clothes out," Elaine stood facing away from me as I toweled off. She sniffled and wiped her eyes in the mirror. I appreciated that she'd been quiet. I changed while she checked herself in the mirror. "You're dating my daughter," she turned and leaned against the sink while I toweled at my hair. I nodded slowly. "I knew that. I just never said it. And it seems so silly now, doesn't it?" she smiled to herself and looked away again. I wiped my glasses. "I did this," she had her hand over her face.

"No," I stopped her, holding her shoulders. "No one did this," I assured her. "The man who pulled the trigger did this."

"In the big picture, I did this," she looked to me for something. Her eyes were bloodshot. I'm sure I looked much worse. But now I was clean.

"No you didn't," I promised her. She tightened her lips. I saw her take a deep breath and I avoided looking at myself in the mirror.

"When her grandfather died," she began. Her eyes were far away. "I think we lost a bit of her we never got back. I will never be able to forget," she swallowed, watching her hands wring themselves. "I can't forget her face. It was this profound loss. And she didn't cry," Elaine shook her head. "She just looked at me and said that no one would ever understand her again." I watched her pause for a moment. "And I didn't understand, you know?" she asked me seriously, as if I could. "She was so afraid, in that moment. She was terrified that no one would understand who she was so innately, that it changed her. And I don't think anyone has understood her since." She looked away from me and wiped her eyes. She was not crying, but she was upset. "She was just this little girl who understood too much, and I let this happen to her." I hesitated but could not touch her.

"This happened because she is a Peck," I tried to console her. "And that means she is innately brave, and ridiculously stubborn." I saw a bit of a smile. "She is ferociously protective. She did this because of me," I shook my head and took a steadying breath. "I guess we can all take blame for it, but she's Gail, and she'd do it again, without a doubt." The mother nodded slightly, but I didn't do anything to sway her fear at all. "We should get back," I rushed a bit. I didn't want to be away. I didn't want to be here at all. She nodded and we made our way back to the waiting room.

She made me sit in the chairs. She sat beside me. Steve sat beside her. We were morose and somber faced. I was weary, and I couldn't feel my knees. I rubbed them. I rubbed them for an hour until my hand was numb and Peter handed me a cup of coffee. So I picked at the lid and didn't drink a drop. The waiting room was quiet, and I hated it. Gail was quiet, and I liked her quiet, because there was this understanding of the perfection of silence with her. Here, it was damaging and killing me and making my lungs creak and struggle in its stifling-ness.

The crowd thinned, at points. The clock marched stubbornly forward despite it. Cops came and went, before and after shift change. Andy handed me a sandwich. Chris hugged me and took Steve's seat for a few minutes while he made some phone calls. Peter came back and took Elaine's seat while she argued with nurses. They all touched me and tried to assure me and I became more and more staunch.

The shooting occurred at 1:38 pm. I knew that because I saw it on the phone. The next time I looked at the clock, it was 7:18 am.

"Superintendent Peck," the doctor finally reached us in the waiting room. He looked so composed and himself, that it scared me. "May I speak with you?" He looked uneasily at everyone around, swarming him after hours of indifferent pacing and waiting for the worst.

"You can speak to all of us," she stood up. I watched her hold her sons hand. Gail's father somberly stood against the wall, eyes hidden behind tired lids, sadness dripping from his very stature. I wrapped my arms around myself. I felt Peter's hands on my shoulders. Their weight was staggering. The doctor eyed her uneasily again and shuffled slightly. He swallowed and fiddled with the folder in his hands.

"First, I need you all to understand that this was a very large, and severe trauma for a body to undergo," he swallowed again and rubbed his shoulder. "Gail is alive. We recovered six bullets in her abdominal and chest, as well as one in her arm and another in her hip."

"But she's alive?" her mother asked. I took a shaky breath. He nodded. I tilted my head back and chanted 'Thank God,' repeatedly.

"But she is not out of the woods yet," he interrupted the sighs of relief. "We had to work with massive internal bleeding, a haemopneumothorax from damage to the lungs. We are continually running tests to make sure her heart is strong enough." I was not a doctor, officially, but I understood what it all meant. I held Peter's hand on my shoulder and squeezed his fingers tightly. "We had to remove her spleen, as well as do major repairing of major organs and vessels. Right now she is in an induced coma. We are waiting to see how her arm reacts, because we are unsure of the nerve damage. Her femur is reconstructed, we have her set and pinned. It will heal well, we are sure, luckily it was not a severe hit."

"And you're telling us she's alive?" Gail's mother asked again. I saw her father look at the sky. I wondered if he was doing the same thing I was; praying. I wondered if he knew how either.

"She is," the doctor promised. "But it won't be an easy, or guaranteed recovery."

"But she's alive?" I finally found my voice. I felt eyes upon me. He nodded again.

"She's in the ICU, so naturally we can't have all of you," he trailed off again. He felt guilty because they were cops. I felt Peter push me forward slightly. I stumbled.

"Go ahead," Elaine flopped into the chair. "I can't..." I rested my hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She held it for a moment. I turned to look back at everyone. It was a tired congregation that looked beyond destroyed.

"You can head home," I offered. It was weak, but everyone looked at me. "I will call with any details if something happens." I watched a few heads look about at each other. I watched them shuffle.

"I don't have to be in til this afternoon," Chris sat again beside Elaine.

"I will go grab some breakfast and coffee," McBride offered. A few dug in their pockets and handed him spare cash.

"We can wait," Dov decided, sitting with Andy. They were both still in uniform and ragged. Andy nodded.

"Leo's with his dad," Traci sat as well.

"That's my partner," Peter sat, too, head hung and hands clasped together.

There were repeated murmurs as everyone sat again to wait and pray and hope. I realized what it all meant. I returned to the doctor and he led me down the hall to the rooms. I heard the beeping of the machines that surrounded her, and that was disruptive.

"She's alive?" I asked again, standing in the door, surveying how frail and damaged she looked. He nodded again.

"We'll be in after a while to do rounds," he opened his arm and ushered me inside. "It's okay," he promised. The door was closed behind me a second later, and I was left stark still at the foot of the hospital bed.

Slowly, I moved around to the chair beside the bed. Slower, even, I looked at her. I looked at the tubes in her. I looked at the wires. Her legs were covered, and she was laying like a body in my morgue, which was very much unlike Gail. She slept like a starfish, and I knew that because she hogged the bed and pushed me around, but let me hold her when she did. Now she looked foreign and wrong. Her hip was plastered, with long metal rods sticking out from her thigh. The mechanical device there made her look remade, but it scared the hell out of me. I wanted to touch her skin. I wanted to make it better, and take account of it all. But I couldn't. I couldn't fix this.

She had tubes in her throat. She had gauze peeking beneath her gown. She had more tubes and wires.

"Gail," I whispered, hoping to wake her, even though I knew she wouldn't. "I'm so sorry," I pushed the hair from her forehead. "I know dying might sounds really nice right now," I stared at her hard. "But please don't. Please please please don't. You made it this far. I promise the rest is easy."

I sat on the edge of the chair and managed to touch her arm where it wasn't casted or wired or tubed or poked or damaged too much. I traced the short downy hairs there. I stared at her skin as if it would help.

"Do you remember when I was sick?" I ventured, leaning my cheek on the edge of the bed and arm. "And you tried to make me soup?" I could have laughed, but I didn't have that in me either. "It was horrible soup," I told her. "But when you rubbed Viks on me. That's when I knew I loved you. You think it was easy, but I didn't want to," I explained meekly. "I truly didn't, because I wasn't sure I was ready. But you made me soup," I shrugged. "And you got yourself sick taking care of me. And you let me take care of you." I paused and touched her hand again. "I can take care of you again. I just want you back," I begged. "I know that's selfish, but I don't care."

I listened to the beeping of her heart monitor as it assured me she was still alive. Barely, but that didn't matter.

"Please, God," I knelt my head against the plastic railing of the bed. "Protect her. She is wondrous and tiny and mine," I felt my eyes become heavy with water. "Please bring her back to me, and I will mend her. Make her healthy, and breathing, and living, and I will make her loved." I pushed my messy hair from my face and set my chin on the railing now, looking at her, afraid to be anywhere else. "Give her strength, and I will be here every step of the way," I vowed. I swallowed. "You know what, God?" I looked at the plasterboard ceiling. "I don't normally pray, at least I didn't before I met her. But you took my dad. And you can't just take everyone I love. That's not fair." I wanted to touch her again. To tell her it would be alright. "It's not fair!" I insisted. "So don't do it. Don't you dare do it." I gritted my teeth and found the resolve. "Amen."

The wires made more beeping noises. They grew loud and obnoxious and I watched her body sit perfectly still while a battle raged inside. I heard commotion from the machines.

"Move!" A nurse pushed me aside. Gail remained still, but they moved her body and I saw blood on her bandages.

"No!" I screamed. "I PRAYED!" I clutched at my chest and screamed for all I was worth. "I love you," I managed weakly. My throat was suddenly raw.

"Clear!"

More paddles and wires and beeping and honking and commotion.

"I love you!"

* * *

**Chapter 12: La Petite Mort**

* * *

La Petite Mort

_Je crois qu'il est trop tard_  
_Pour t'avouer que j'ai mal_  
_À mon coeur mourant_  
_Et mes souvenirs tachés de blanc._

"It's bullshit," I sighed and grunted at the same time. I tried to swallow, but it hurt.

"What do you want me to do?" my mother asked, anxiously flitting her way about the room. She adjusted my sheets. She adjusted the blinds. She adjusted that vase of flowers. She adjusted the other vase of flowers. She stacked some cards. She adjusted some books. She stacked magazines. She was everywhere, and it made me even more tense. "Have him called down and interrogated until he gives in to what you want?"

"Yes!" I groaned, struggling to reach for my cup of water. "Something, at least." I couldn't reach the table. I died a bit in that moment.

"Here, honey," she flitted over to the side of the bed. I wanted to rip the rods from my leg. My mother's overt and exaggerated kindness did that to me. It'd been that way since I woke up. Well, mostly since they started to ween me off of the harder painkillers. Instead I used the fantasy of stabbing her in the leg with one of my rods as a form of diversion. I knew it was unhealthy. I didn't care. I had nothing else to do except wait for my body to heal, which was a slow and arduous journey. Mostly boring though. It was a dreadfully boring and oddly social. I nearly wished it'd been lonely. That might have been easier.

"That's good," I tried to escape her straw of well-meaning. "This is border-line water-boarding."

"Now Gail, knock it off," she insisted, putting the cup down and adjusting her uniform in the mirror. "I'm just helping."

"You're smothering," I looked out the window with a scowl. "Everyone's smothering."

"God forbid we all worry about you," she pretended to be exasperated. "If we weren't here, you'd have torn all your stitches in stubbornness."

"I'm fine," I insisted, adjusting myself and instead going no where. I tried to take a deep breath, but it constricted halfway in my chest. With my movable arm, I gently laid my hand on the bullet hold in my chest. Then moved it to the one in my ribs. I still wasn't aware. "Don't you have to go to work anytime today?"

"Yes, Gail," she rolled her eyes and checked her watch. "I think some of your friends will be in shortly." I groaned again, audibly. "What, honey?" she had her hands on her hips. I stared at the window again. "What would you do if we didn't stop by? Bring you things, keep you company. Just lay there, bored and wallowing?"

"Yes, probably," I shrugged with one shoulder.

"We don't care," she decided. She was beside me. I was sick of laying. "You don't get it," she stood over me. "We almost lost you. You're going to get smothered."

"I can't die," I sighed. "I can't. So this is pointless. I won't even be able to go back to work," I looked away again. "What's the point?"

"We don't know what will happen," she scolded me.

"I have holes," I glared at her. "I have holes in me. I'm missing an organ. They took my kidney, too. My heart, it barely wanted to work. And my limbs?" I scoffed and laughed a bit mercilessly. "Look at my leg!" I gestured to the mechanical arrangement on my thigh. "I am a fucking cyborg. Look at these," I pointed weakly at the rods. "These go into my body. The doctor said I will be lucky to walk without a noticeable limp let alone run. And my arm!"

"Gail," she tried to quiet me. I was growing more loud.

"I don't know how to do anything else," I was frazzled. "I'm a fucking Peck!"

"Yes, you are," she assured me. I felt my heart thumping. It was working too hard. I gasped and took deep breaths. I was burning up. She was quiet and watching me. I took deeper breaths and closed my eyes. I pushed the button for painkillers. "You're always a Peck," she promised. I nodded.

"I'm tired, Mom," I sighed. "I'm going to rest."

"Okay," she agreed. "I'll bring in some new pants for you tomorrow morning," she offered, grabbing her purse. "You've gone through all of yours with the cutting one leg off." I closed my eyes when the painkillers made my body seem very far away. I liked the button. I was wary and afraid of the button. But I used it. "Anything else I can bring you?"

"No, Mom," I sighed, sleep close to me.

"Okay, I'll see you tomorrow," she leaned over and kissed my forehead.

I knew exactly how long I stayed asleep. They were running in cyclical shifts when they visited. I had a routine. My mother or father, or both, visited in the morning, early, before work and before I needed to be awake. Then the nurses came in, and the one with the red hair joked and offered me a sponge bath before blushing. She was my favorite because she snuck me newspapers and let me be angry. And she checked on me a few times a day, knowing when to kick people out when I called the station without my visitors realizing. But I slept through her, and newspapers were beside my bed. And now, sitting in the chair and flipping through the channels was Traci on her lunch break. My lunchtime visitors varied, depending on the day. But it was oddly agreed upon that it was some combination of Andy, Dov, Chris, Traci, Andy, or Oliver. And that usually went well, because they told me what I was missing if I had stayed at 15. They didn't do it maliciously. I asked. Peter, or one of my teammates stopped by at any hour, depending on what was happening. Frequently they came later in the evening. And like clockwork, almost to the minute, at 4:25 pm, Holly would somehow stumble into my room, nearly out of breath, carrying something and her backpack full of work she hadn't finished. It was almost as if she ran in to make sure I was still alive. And I hated it.

"You have a television at your own house," I grumbled, still weary from the dose of painkiller. My body was still not my own, and I felt imprisoned. I coughed slightly.

"But you're not at my house," she smiled widely, turning to me and slipping her feet back to the floor. "How are you feeling, today, killer?"

"Groggy," I closed my eyes with the lingering high.

"Your mom must have been in, then, alone," she laughed and stood, refilling my water cup. I nodded and sipped. "She's been on a rampage at work."

"How is that different from any other time?" I pushed the cup away decidedly. She nodded and perused the contents of my room, taking stock of how much more like home it was becoming.

"I wouldn't have expected you to be such a reader," she observed, checking the titles of the stack of novels that accumulated on the dresser because of Holly. "One Hundred Years of Solitude," she read, flipping through the pages.

"I can't turn the pages," I coughed a bit and raised the bed, struggling to adjust myself. My wounds were still sore, my body was stubborn. "Holly reads them, sometimes," I lied. She read them every night for me, because it was hard to sleep sometimes. I had to give her something. Because I would send her out of the room when I weakly tried to wash and the gingery nurse would come in and help me. And I had to do that because I was often ashamed of the idea of having Holly see my body now. It was holed and full of puckering pink scars and metal, now. I had a long, wide line right down my middle, bisecting my chest in half. And they hurt, but not nearly as much as I would imagine her eyes would to look upon it.

"She's a sweetheart," Traci put the book back on the pile and gave me a warm smile, testing the waters of our friendship to see if it was warm enough to cannonball into the relationship pool.

"Yeah," I grinned despite myself and my worry. "She's kind of awesome."

"Kind of?" Traci laughed and leaned against the bed. "She was..." She searched. "Don't you know what she did while you were under? Any of it?" I tried to sit up higher with my one arm.

"I know it takes a lot to convince her to go home," I chuckled a bit.

"She laid on top of you until they got you into surgery so you wouldn't bleed out," Traci explained with amusement. "The girl was a trauma rockstar. She stood just outside the surgery hallway for ten hours before your mother could get her to shower off your blood and sit down."

"My mother?" I heaved a sigh and shook my head. I had not known or even thought to think about how I got there, or that Holly had to be involved. Everyone tip-toed about the big picture and focused on the getting me to stay alive part, now. All I tried to do was remember what happened, anything.

"Oh, man," Traci laughed a bit. I suppose that's all you can do at times like that. "She threw a fit," she patted my good leg. "It was quite a show when she got here. But I think it was Holly that held everyone together."

"That sounds about right," I nodded. I absently rubbed my gauzed chest.

"Do you not get how much she loves you?" Tracie gave me motherly eyes as well. They called me stupid for not trying to see just that. Holly read me stories at night, and laid on the smallest sliver of bed when I asked her to join me and watch really shitty reality television, and she slept here, most days, either in the chair at awkward angles or beside me, tense and unmoving to disrupt me or hurt me. She brought me outside food I wasn't supposed to have, but it saved me. She stopped playing hockey, and that killed me and I told her not to do it, but she said she couldn't imagine playing and I was just laying here all alone. I could only wish for that luxury.

"That girl," Traci looked away. "She's so happy you're alive." She had a sad smile on her face and looked at the floor. "And I will punch your bad leg if you fuck it up." I laughed until it hurt, which wasn't long, but still felt oddly good.

"I think I'm past that," I promised.

"Good," she agreed. "Because if you two break up, I'm keeping Holly in the divorce."

"You're hilarious," I rolled my eyes and wished I could push her, so instead I nudged her with my knee she was closest to.

"Who's joking?" she pretended to be serious.

"Can I ask you something, Traci?" I ventured after a second of quiet. I was filled with the bitterness of a feeble body and heavy mind. She nodded, sensing the shift in my voice. "Do you still miss Jerry?" I asked quietly. I didn't want to look her in the eyes for that question, but that was necessary, and even I knew that. She considered it after a moment of surprise.

"Yeah," she nodded with soft eyes. "Every day." I swallowed. That was difficult. I wanted water, but I couldn't just ask someone with a dead fiancé to hand me a cup again.

"Were you glad..." I swallowed nothing again. "Was it easier because he didn't suffer?" I looked at my hands fiddling in my lap.

"A little yes, and a little no," she explained. "I would rather have had him paralyzed and rebuilt, torn apart and alive, though, if that's what you're asking."

"I... I sometimes wish..." I closed my eyes. I wish I could press the button again. "It's a lot to make her put up with. This," I struggled to speak. This was a confession of sorts and it was to the wrong person. "It's hard."

"You didn't die," she stated simply. "So now you live. It's that simple. The rest is just bullshit." I nodded.

"I'm sorry," I murmured. She was quiet a minute.

"I know that all you have time to do is lay here and think," she turned to me finally. "But don't waste it on stupid questions of life or death. They won't get you anywhere, Gail." I nodded again. She smiled. "Beside you have all the television you could want." I snorted. "Soon it will get hard, and you will have to rehab your body, and you have to be mentally strong for that."

"You sound like my shrink," I groaned. She laughed a big laugh.

"You mean I could be making way more money talking like that?" she was in disbelief. "That one is on the house, but I'm charging next time." She checked her watch as my nurse came in. "I better be off. Double homicide last night."

"Ah, the good stuff," I sighed with nostalgia heavy in my wounded little heart. My nurse moved about, unnoticed and silent.

"Can I bring you anything tonight?"

"No, no," I shushed her. "I'm fine. You have Leo's play. Take tons of pictures, okay? I can't wait until I don't look like..." I looked at my leg and my chest and I'm sure my face wasn't any better. "A transformer, so he can come play games." Traci laughed.

"Are you kidding?" she grabbed her coat. "He would love to see all this junk. I can bring him in over the weekend."

"If you're sure it won't traumatize him," I was hopeful. I enjoyed babysitting. Mostly I enjoyed playing Hungry Hungry Hippos.

"I think he can handle it. You're like his favorite superhero right now anyway," she shrugged her coat on and sentence with the same inclination. "Super Gail, who stops the bad guys and gets rouged up in the process, like Batman."

"Seriously?" I laughed. My nurse laughed as well, despite herself. Traci nodded.

"Oh yeah. How else was I supposed to explain what happened to an eight year old?"

"Good point," I gave her. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Rest up," she pointed at me authoritatively.

"Be safe," I returned. And with that, she made her exit with a wave.

I yawned and looked at the stack of books again. Holly placed a single vase of flowers there, getting rid of the others that filled my room at one point. They daunted me and smothered me in love and guilt. But she straightened up and filled the vase. When I awoke, painful and groggy as that had been, Holly was there, holding my hand. And my mother told me that she had not left the hospital the entire month I was in a coma. She stayed there. She slept and she waited and she prayed. And to be loved like that, to drive someone mad for a month of uncertainty made me feel even more guilty.

"This is a new one," Annie said as she straightened the wires near the machine.

"Huh?" I looked over, again trying to adjust myself.

"This picture," she held up. It was Holly and I at Christmas dinner. Beside it were one of my friends at her game. She brought them to decorate.

"Yeah," I grinned widely. "My favorite one," I confessed. "Only don't tell her, because she'll think I'm sentimental. But it helps. Being here all day. To remember..."

"You both look happy," she placed it back. "Would it be the worst thing in the world to let her know you're happy and sentimental?"

"It might be," I sighed.

She shook her head and did my examination, checking this and that, dressing this and that, prodding and poking and listening and mending. I just laid there, as I was forced to do, and would be for at least three more months.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Gail," a voice startled me awake from my impudent slumber-like exam.

"It's okay," I cringed as Annie lifted my leg slightly. "I'm just getting my hinges oiled, I guess."

"I'm sorry I haven't been by all week," Mrs. Stewart came in, her smile growing as I shirked off her apology for coming in. "Work has been dreadful, and I know Holly is usually here in the evenings, and I didn't want to disrupt you girls." She blushed slightly.

"Nothing to interrupt," I promised awkwardly. "Ouch, fuck sakes, Annie," I gritted my teeth. "I'm sorry," I looked back at Mrs. Stewart.

"How are you, dear?" she leaned over and looked at my face searchingly. "Besides the obvious."

"Good," I lied. My pills were making me nauseous.

"You look like you haven't eaten in years," she patted my cheek softly. "I will bring you dinner next time. I'm making homemade sauce next week. I can bring you some."

"That's not necessary," I tried to insist. I couldn't eat anything at this rate.

"Hush," she scolded. "It's no trouble. I can't just let you wither away."

"It's miraculous Holly isn't five hundred pounds after growing up with you," I cringed again. It took my breath away.

"She hasn't shown you pictures?" her mother was surprised. "I'll bring those too. She had such a cute chubby phase from about six to thirteen, before she skyrocketed to seven feet tall." I couldn't help but laugh and get a bit excited about this. "She had these cheeks, oh my. It was adorable." I watched her watch the nurse who finally set my leg back down after cleaning around the rods gently. "How is it?" she asked, ignoring me.

"Looks good from out here," Annie gave her an ease-inducing smile. "No infection, which we were nervous about, but we'll do X-rays sometime next month to check the healing of the bone."

"Well, that's great news," Mrs. Stewart decided. She turned back to me and put her hand on my shoulder. I nodded. "What about everything else?"

"She's looking good all over, Mrs. Stewart," Annie again was calming. "Wounds are healing just on schedule. Internally, everything is staying patched. We will work on her arm next month as well."

"What about the medications?" Holly's mother worried. She held the railing of the bed. I hit the button absently to escape the talk, but I was done for the day and not allowed anymore. "I've been reading, you know, about what happens with only one kidney and no spleen. Is there a donor list? Something?" She didn't sound frazzled, just curious.

"Unfortunately, or I suppose fortunately, she's too well to need a new kidney, and she can live with just one," Annie explained, signing my chart near my feet.

"It can take up to ten years off of a life, with only one kidney," the mother continued.

"We have to cross that road when we come to it," Annie clicked her pen. "The doctors will be in for evening rounds in about a half hour. Can I get you anything else, Gail?" She turned to me. I shook my head. "I'll see you, Mrs. Stewart. Take it easy, okay? I can bring in some pamphlets for you next time you come in to explain some of what we did."

"That'd be lovely, honey," Mrs. Stewart smiled warmly. "The internet is a terrifying place." Annie laughed and agreed as she exited.

"You're scary when you're curious," I almost scolded her.

"This is what you get when you become a Stewart," she shrugged and fiddled with my sheets, pulling them up a bit and smoothing them gently over my stomach. I almost liked the sound of that. "There was this book," she started, digging in her purse for something. "It said something about not being original, you know, like I am not original, but I have these smudges and fingerprints of everyone I've ever met. And I like that," she pulled out a brush. All moms had brushes in their purses. "But it works both ways, you know?"

"You don't have to," I tried to dissuade her. She pulled my hair from the pony tail and started to brush.

"It looks like a rat's nest," she informed me. I had to give her that one. "But as I was saying. You left smudges on us. And we were worried, too. So I'm going to google and badger the nurses."

"Okay," I relented.

"I will bring you in some dry shampoo that smells good," she observed as she pulled my hair up again.

"Okay," I agreed again.

It took some work, but I managed to get her to sit down and talk about work. She could talk like crazy if she wanted. I enjoyed her. I enjoyed her humor and her distracting from laying in a bed. I enjoyed how kind and nice she was and decided those must be genetic traits, because Holly got them, and I didn't. Mrs. Stewart looked like her daughter, or rather her daughter looked like her. But where Holly had long and wavy hair that I got to play with absently while she slept on my shoulder, Mrs. Stewart had short, dark hair. They had similar eyes, though Holly was much taller than her mother.

"I should head home," she decided. "I will bring you the travel DVD player, next time, too," she informed me. "You need movies, not this crappy daytime television. That'll make you mental." She practically snorted at the television in the background.

"You're going through too much trouble for me, Mrs. Stewart," I reminded her.

"Gail, I will box your ears in if you keep calling me that," she scolded me as she gather her coat and purse.

"It helps remind me that you're my girlfriend's mom," I laughed a bit. She shook her head.

"Can I get you anything before I head out?" she paused beside me after putting on her coat.

"No, ma'am," I informed her. "I'm just going to rest a bit."

"Sounds good, love," she fiddled with the sheets again. "I'll see you soon. We've got to fatten you up a bit. I just don't like it."

"Okay," I agreed. "Drive safe."

"Of course, officer," she saluted and waved again as she closed the door behind her.

And there it was.

I was left in silence. There was the occasional click of a machine behind me. There was the distant murmur of the city just outside of the window across the room. And I was just left there with myself. That, and the dull, throbbing pain in my body at certain points. For the first time that day, I recognized what a chamber my body had become, brittle and afraid to move itself. At least for the moment, I understood why people came to see me. I wish I had the capacity to write. I wish I didn't have to ask people to hand me things. I wish I hadn't been shot. Almost more, I wish I hadn't been saved. No one should have to survive that. And the next month alone would kill me. Not to mention where I saw myself in a year, hobbling with a stiff leg and weak, nearly unusable arm, riddled with scars, on handfuls of medication to combat the spleen and kidney. I took a deep breath, or as deep as I could.

I saw the pictures and wondered about what Holly had to do to save me. She worked from my room, often, and I can imagine entire reports analyzed and composed in the chair beside my bed while I was drugged beyond knowable consciousness. She laid on top of me. She saw my body, bleeding and broken and she stayed there for I didn't know how long, she stayed there and she kept pressure. I don't think I'd know anyone braver.

They told me about the man I killed. I didn't remember that. They told me that I put Holly in the body cubby. I vaguely remembered those actions, but not specifically. The last concrete memory I clung to was crossing the street to return to the station with Holly after lunch. And then I woke up.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Holly whispered as I stirred. It was dark outside.

"It's not morning?" I asked groggily. "Is it?" I sat up too quickly, pulling my leg roughly.

"No," she laughed and put the file and notepad she was working in on the A/C unit on the wall. "It's only after six," she promised. "I brought you dinner," she picked up the Chinese take out cartons.

"I can't," I smelled too much. "I don't have the stomach for it."

"I'm sorry," she rushed to close it and put it on the floor. "I was hoping your favorite foods might make you more apt to eat."

"I wish," I sighed. I watched her rush about, cleaning and picking and fixing. "Hey," I coughed and stopped her. "Maybe you should spend a night away from here," I offered. She stopped and looked at me as if I were crazy.

"Why...?" she asked slowly.

"I just mean..." I moved my hand a bit. "It's got to be wearing you down, every night for hours in this room." Holly laughed. She laughed heartily.

"Says the girl that can't get out of bed," she chuckled. "Gail, stop," she stood up beside me and touched my cheek. "I can be here. I want to be here."

"Okay," I didn't try to fix it.

Holly kissed me. She kissed me hard and I forgot everything else. Her lips were better than the pills they made me take. They were better than the button I had to push earlier.

"Will you tell me about what happened?" I asked after she pulled away.

"Do we have to talk about that?" she gave me big and worried eyes. I shook my head.

"I suppose not," I smiled. "Can we sit me up?" I asked. She helped me move around. "Now get in here," I scooted and cringed at once. Holly slipped off her shoes and crawled in gently beside me.

"Hi," she whispered, putting her arm across my stomach. "How was your day?"

"Busy," I decided. "Now tell me anything."

And she spoke and I was very glad to be alive.

* * *

**Chapter 13: Holy**

* * *

_Holy_

_I don't mind being lonely,  
Don't need to be told.  
Stop acting so holy,  
I know I'm full of holes._

"It hurts," I gritted between grinding teeth. I locked my elbow on my bad arm and adjusted it forward slightly.

"That's good," Ben rolled his chair a bit further ahead of me. "That's progress." I glared and I imagined punching him, but I doubted I could support my own weight long enough to get the proper swing it would require. "Three more steps."

"My chest hurts," I paused and doubled over slightly, as much as I could. My heart was racing. I wanted to push on my chest, but that wasn't healthy. My head hung below my shoulders, almost pushing me off balance, but I gripped the bars so tightly I thought my handprint would be left there when I shuffled forward next.

"You can sit," Holly offered worriedly from the opposite side of the room. She'd relegated herself there as I'd already snapped at her repeatedly today. I closed my eyes and heaved my leg from the hip forward. Nerves be damned. "You'll tear your stitches," she reminded me. I looked at my chest, gauze peaking through the top of my shirt. I moved my other leg as well. Ben squeaked slightly. I heard Holly adjust her legs. I saw her wrap her arms around them and set her chin on her knee in the chair behind me, watching quietly.

"There we go," Ben encouraged me, hands ghosting my hips, bracing me. I lurched a bit more. I heaved and I tried to feel and my arm gave out and I ended up on the floor anyway, just like every other day this week. Between a weak arm and dead leg, I was a fall risk to be reckoned with. "Alright, I got you," he lifted me by under the shoulders and set me in my wheelchair. "Excellent work." I tried to catch my breath. I wondered if the pacemaker clicked and pulsed harder at moments like this. I didn't have a choice when they cut me open for that. I didn't have a choice for much of it.

"Do I get to go home now?" I adjusted myself slightly while he wrote on my chart. I wanted to be out of hospitals. I craved Holly's bed, and the smell of her sheets. Or the way the light woke her up in my bed, and she burrowed into the pillow. I craved familiar settings that were actually becoming quite forgotten to myself. Which scared me. Five months away from my own bed was too much.

"You know that's not my call," he reminded me. "Now, I want you to be doing those exercises we talked about," he went back to writing. "The ones I showed you yesterday?" he looked at me for conformation when he finished. Holly stood and grabbed her bag. "But do not over-exert. The quickest way to slow down your progress, or even go backwards, is to try to do too much to heal quicker. It doesn't work unless your body is ready."

"Got it," I shrugged. I felt Holly lean against the handles of the wheelchair.

"I want you on crutches for a few hours," he reminded me again. "I want to start cane work next week." I closed my eyes and sighed. "Make sure she listens," he was talking to Holly now. I hated that. I hated being a child that needed to be watched. I hated it all. I felt the indignation burning on my skin, sizzling all over.

"Trust me, I'm just here for support," Holly insisted. "She is healing herself."

That was kind of a lie. She was there to worry and make sure I didn't lie to her again about what I was and was not allowed to do. Last time I did that, I fell and damaged my leg again. She thought it'd been her own fault for having to work and not be there for an appointment. She knew it was my fault for being stubborn, and I watched her internally debate how much she hated and loved that about me. Mostly, I think she worried over the fact that I frequently was caught hitting my leg to see if my nerve would come back. I'd lost my nerve though. I'd lost a few things, actually. She still kept worrying quite incessantly. I wondered if she'd ever stop. I wanted things be the like they'd been six months ago.

"No more than a half hour of strenuous activity," he looked at us both. "Please don't push it, Gail." I nodded. "I will see you in a few days, okay?"

"Who is it tomorrow?" I asked as Holly backed us up.

"You'll be working with Joey tomorrow," he flipped through pages as he answered. I nodded.

"Thanks, Ben," Holly offered him a smile, or must have, because he smiled back and nodded back with a wave.

Holly pushed me towards the elevator. This rehab clinic was farther away from the hospital downtown. It was away from everyone accessing me easily. It'd done nothing to deter them, though, but simply altered the time in which they visited. Frequently, it was an 'I was in the neighborhood' stop by while on the clock. Occasionally, it was someone who visited on purpose. Mostly, it was a bit quieter, because I could choose to ignore phone calls.

"You know you didn't have to come," I insisted after a rather quiet elevator ride. Holly and I made our way towards my room at the end of the hall. "I know you have work."

"There is no where else I could be," she reminded me. She said that often. It made me feel obligatory. I knew it wasn't the case. But in my heart and from the tick of my mechanized pulse, I felt it still. "Don't you worry. I know when I need to stay and work." She parked me. "You're my favorite person."

"Okay," I nodded.

"Should we shower?" she asked innocently with that voice. I heard the door click. I saw her not innocent smile. That was contagious.

This was the part that made me nervous. I swallowed and nodded. This was still new to me, with my new body.

Holly went into the bathroom and I heard her start the water. I closed my eyes, braced my hands on the bed and pushed myself upwards. Balancing was a learning tradition. I used the crutches slightly better than my own legs and hobbled into the now and quickly filling, steamy bathroom. I swallowed roughly again.

"I want to go home," I sighed. I put the crutches against the wall and stood on one leg like a flamingo.

"I know," Holly insisted. "I want you to come home. It'd be a bit of normalcy." She reached for my shirt and slowly pulled it over my arms, allowing me to hold her shoulders as I wobbled. "It's like we're just... waiting... you know? to start life again."

"You could bust me out," I raised my eyebrows conspiratorially. It was almost an appeal. I meant it lightly. She had a heavy sigh though and I saw her eyes on my body. I swallowed again. It never got easier.

She softly touched the pink strips and spots of skin.

I think love might have been a bit of magic, at times. I struggled not to ask her if she was, if she believed she had healing powers, if she did, if she prayed, what she saw, why she was reverent. I struggled not to speak frequently, almost as much as I struggled to speak.

The first time she saw me, after _it_, was an accident. I wanted to live forever without her seeing me. But she did, as she was known to do. She saw them. And I will be haunted forever by her face and her shaking hands that stuttered to gain the strength or bravery to touch them. She looked me in the eyes for permission. I wasn't sure if I gave it, but that was irrelevant. I'd been lying there, and I was bare and I wanted her to run away. I dared her to run away. I begged her to run away, still.

But instead, I was haunted by her. Her trembling fingers. The tears that fell silently down her cheeks. The smile that formed in the furrow of her brow and smallest parts of her cheek. It was a daunting haunting. But she stared at me when the nurse left. She looked about the empty room I had, as if someone would tell her not to touch me. And she hovered her fingers over my ribs. I closed my eyes and I bit the inside of my lip. And I held my breath. And I felt the tears running into my ears. There was no more fight or flight. It'd been unfairly and justly decided for us.

But she was braver than Alexander. She was braver than David. She was made of sturdier stuff than an oak or diamond or pearl or steel. And she touched my ribs. And her fingers ghosted along my skin and scars. She took her belated inventory, as she was prone to doing. I wondered if she dreaded that moment. I wondered if I dreaded it as inevitable as well. But we didn't speak.

She touched the pink scar there, and with her other hand, slipped it beneath my back and found the exit. I knew her eyes would be closed, but I couldn't look, because mine were as well. Her hands, possibly of their own vocation and a separate form of bravery, continued. They counted and appraised and sealed the wounds, solidifying their existence in a way as something permanent and mine and now, inadvertently, Holly's. But she kept counting. She moved to the strips of tract that were manmade after the fact. She traced my kidney pocket, that I jokingly referred to it. She traced the connect-the-dots on my thigh. I took in a weary breath, that itself stuttered on my lips. She traced the line up my sternum. She rested her hand there, trying to cover it. I felt her pressure there. She held it for a minute. And when I looked at her she was looking at me, and she was not crying, but I could not stop.

"I want to take you home," she repeated, still surveying, as if afraid some might disappear or be forgotten. As if she had to pay homage every day to the remnants. But she gave me those eyes. They were wonderful eyes. "I want to take you to my place, and I want to go back to our old normal. And I want to just... forget."

"Yeah," I agreed with a smile because she was stuck in the melancholy of it all. "We will have that again," I promised. "We'll figure it out." At times I snapped at her because I was unconvinced of the fact, but for her, I could pretend. It was what I did best. It was also the best thing I did.

"I know," she took a deep breath and smiled. She re-steadied herself. In almost the same motion, she helped me slip from my pants, pulling the leg over the one I could barely lift. On her way back up, she kissed the holes in my hip and pressed her body a bit closer to my own. "We should try to be very normal," she decided with a nod.

"Yeah," i agreed again. I wanted to swallow, but I wanted to kiss her more, so I did that instead.

I balanced and helped her take off her own shirt. I pushed her pants down a few inches so she got the idea. It was all I had, and I wanted it to be more.

"We can only have thirty minutes of strenuous activity," she reminded me. There was that twinkle. That was normal. This could have been her bathroom, had it not been for the terrible decor or the ultra hospital smell there. But the steam that hung to the air and our skin helped dissuade us from remembering that, and for now it was her bathroom. For thirty minutes it could be her bathroom.

Slowly, she helped me into the shower. My knees shook. She sat me on the bench and the water warmed my leg, which grew unnaturally cold most days. This was new though. Holly showering with me. It felt oddly personal, somehow and made me more nervous than the first night I had whiskey to make me brave.

"Stop it," Holly whispered. I wanted to tell her how much I liked her hair like that, damp and in tendrils from the water. Or how pretty she was. But my tongue choked my throat. And she sat on my lap, legs beside my hips. Her arms went to my shoulders, then her hands went to my temples. She stroked my hair. "You're lost." I shook it from my head.

"I'm here," I promised. "I am definitely here," I swore. I gave her a smile, and I kissed her eagerly, because I could still do that. I was still me, and she was still she, and that was wonderful. I was learning that it was wonderful considering everything. It made it valuable. And I could understand that. I was homesick and nostalgic and altogether in love with who I had become.

"Good," I felt her grin against my mouth. "Because this is us, and this matters. Only this." Her hands were on my shoulders. I nodded, because I agreed and now it was painfully obvious despite everything. "This can be home." It was a nice theory, but it made my heart hurt harder.

I kissed her. I felt her lips on my neck. I felt her body on my body. I felt the steam, everywhere. And I felt her cheek on my cheek, and her head duck and her words on my ears. But they were not words, so much as those noises that I needed and spurred me harder. There is a feeling that I can only attune to magic or maybe love. Where my hands would be full of everything she was. The moment her lungs would swell and I could spread my fingers and eclipse her ribs to hold it. Or when she pressed harder against my fingers and I was all she needed to see in her eyelids. Or when she asked nicely. It made me curious about my own accounting.

She was why I had to heal, and she was why my body had to work properly. She was why I pushed. She was why I tried.

"Gail," she sighed and shook and dug her nails into my shoulder blades. And I was a king. And I was a god. Because only a god could make her hips move like that. And only a king could ordain such triumphant sounds. "Fuck," she whispered, head on my shoulder, back heaving with sovereign lungs.

"Yeah," I nodded, holding her, squeezing. Her forehead rested on my forehead. I watched her eyelids flutter. I liked that.

"That was," she nodded, eyes still closed, taking a deep breath. "I'm glad you got your arm workout in for the day."

"I can get used to this strenuous activity workout," I chuckled slightly as she adjusted and shivered. She nodded. "Thank you."

"No," she opened her eyes wide and quite seriously. "Thank you." The corners of her mouth curled slightly.

"My pleasure," I earned a kiss. We felt millions of miles away from home, yet squarely where we had to be.

We were quiet then. I liked that it was possible to do that. I liked that there was the water and the silence that went with it in a white noise kind of way. And I liked how she touched me like I wasn't full of holes or had shredded nerves.

"Tell me something important," I looked at her through my lashes. I looked at her with head turned down. "Something very important. Because I would like to tell you something important."

"Alright," she took a deep breath. I watched her swallow now. That was important. "I haven't gone into the lab in weeks." She cocked her head and looked away. Her arms relaxed on my shoulders. She looked ashamed, and it was not any less beautiful on her.

"But your work," I didn't understand. And I felt sorry for that. She shook her head again. She looked anywhere but at me.

"I work from my office... I just... I can't..." She needed me to understand.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" I was taken aback and left there. She shrugged.

"I didn't want to worry you," she whispered. She dipped her head as if she'd been in trouble. I tilted my head back and shook it slightly. Fuck.

"That is an important thing," I stated dumbly. "I just wanted to tell you thank you for everything and sorry for everything and I love you for everything." I was happy that she wasn't as brave as I thought and I didn't have to be as brave as I pretended. But now I understood that I had failed her in many respects.

"We'll be okay," she promised once again. We both needed that.

We showered and Holly helped me dress, though I was making strides to do it on my own. When Holly decided to go find lunch, I set about my business, and I called in the doctor. I stood waiting on my crutches. I wouldn't let myself sit.

"I'm going home today," I told him.

"I'm sorry, what?" he pushed up his glasses and stared at me.

"I am going home today," I stated again, calmly. "I've let you all stitch me and gut me and mechanize me and tell me how to walk and how to breathe and how to practically shit, and there's this girl," I spoke quickly and with my hands now as he tried to follow. "And she's watched this. She laid on top of me and held me together. And she's spent months here with me. She's chained to here worse than I am. And I've been mean to her. And I've been selfish. And she needs me now. She's needed me for a while, but she needs me now."

"Officer Peck," he insisted. "That's all true and horrible, but its no reason for us to let you go home. You have serious medical needs still."

"I genuinely don't care," I laughed a bit at the realization. "I'm leaving."

We argued for a few minutes. But I would get my way. He went off to get medication and paperwork and instructions. I felt self-satisfying and self-determinatory for the first time since I stabbed that man with a scalpel. And when Holly came back with a carton of food, I was half-assed packing my suitcase, oddly proud of myself for standing up, finally. Mostly figuratively. I was in the wheelchair and packing.

"What are you doing, Gail?" she asked hesitantly.

"Going home," I replied quickly, zipping my bag.

"You're not ready," she placed the food on the table.

"I am," I promised.

"No, you're not," she insisted harder. "The doctors won't let you."

"I already told them I was leaving," I explained.

"But... you can't," she shook her head slightly.

"But I am," I laughed a bit. "You're supposed to be happy. We can sleep in a bed that's bigger than a twin. In a room that doesn't smell like bleach. And no one will come in to check my bandages."

"But... you need that. You have to stay here," she was worried. "You're safe here." There it was.

"Come here," I motioned after a pause. Begrudgingly she sat on the edge of the bed. "Now stop it," I scolded her. "I'm going home with you. And on Monday I will go to work with you."

"What? No!" she shook her head quickly.

"And we will order Chinese for lunch," I continued, ignoring her. "And we will go to the Penny to play trivia."

"It can't be normal," she shook her head after a slight silence. "We want it to, but it can't."

"Maybe not," I agreed. "But can't we just... I don't know... be happy together? From now on? You know, like... full-time?" She chuckled a bit. "It's going to be shitty and not normal, but I haven't been to a family dinner in months. And I want pizza from the cart by the library. And I want to drink at the Penny. And I want to move forward. With you."

Holly paused and her lips grew thin. She closed her eyes for a moment longer than a blink.

"You're not going to die, right?" she looked at me. I wanted to laugh as if it were a joke.

"Cross my heart with a magnet," I crossed it with my fingers. She gave me a small smile.

And so we went home. And played video games on my couch until the boys came home. And they joined us.

There was a moment when Holly laughed and rested her head on my shoulder, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, and in that moment in particular, I remembered how wonderful it was to be alive, and why we do the things we do.

**THE END**


	2. Chapter 2

_Someday my pain_  
_Someday my pain, my pain_  
_Someday my pain_  
_Someday my pain._

"Can you extend it any farther?"

"Christ, how far do you need it to go? I'm not an action figure."

"I'm just seeing what kind of range of motion you're looking at here," the doctor held under my arm and felt at my shoulder and elbow joints.

"It works fine," I moved as much as I could despite soreness. It didn't work fine, and he knew that as much as I knew it. He nodded though, nicely, with a clinically benevolent smile. "This thing," I turned my arm over and wiggled my fingers slightly. "This thing isn't being cooperative."

"Residual nerve damage," the doctor wiggled my fingers. "Here, stand up," he held my hands and helped pull me off of the exam table. He took a seat on his stool and jotted a few things in my impressively large folder. I leaned against the table for a moment and stretched my knee a bit. "Now how's the knee?"

"Oh, you know..." I took a few steps to show off my impressive limp and nifty cane. "I'm hitting a top cruising speed of about one block per day. That's a joke."

"It looks good," he followed me, sitting his chin in his hand, watching my mechanics. "It looks really, really good, compared to a few months ago."

"So in a few more months I'll be galloping?" I earned a chuckle from him as he turned back towards the desk and jotted a few more notes. He listened to my heart. It was prone to stopping sometimes, though I told Holly it was because of her, she poked at my chest as if she could flip the switch on my pacemaker herself.

"Take a seat," he patted the table again. "It's been almost a year," he started, taking off his glasses and leaning in for the bad news dad talk. "And you've done amazing things. I know you can run for short distances. I know you can grip a pistol somewhat. I know you can flex your arm reasonably well."

"But."

"There is no but, just a continuation-"

"But."

He looked at his hands and wrung them together.

"You know I worked with your grandfather," he still didn't look up at me. "I was here the day you were born. He was a nervous wreck. He paced in my office. He was convinced you were going to be a girl. And he was terrified. He told me having sons and grandsons was easy for him. But you, he was so afraid you were going to ruin him. And you did. He held you and you looked at him and he was never the same. Once a man has a granddaughter, he's different."

"Do you have children?"

"Two sons and four granddaughters, with another on the way," he smiled. "He was right. You have different hopes for grandsons and graddaughters. Grandsons you take fishing, and granddaughters, you become afraid you won't know how to be around them, won't understand."

"He took me fishing," I smiled.

"I take mine fishing, too," he laughed. "But I am known for my tea party throwing prowess, as well."

"But," I sighed in the quiet between us.

"But," he relented, "I don't see these getting any better than what they are now," he was wringing his hands again. "And I am going to have to recommend you for retirement due to service-related injuries making you unfit to fully execute your duties." I swallowed and nodded, and nodded, and kept nodding until I could breathe again. "I wish, so much, that I had better news for you."

"This is great news," I lied. "Who doesn't want to be retired before the age of twenty-five?" He laughed and patted my knee.

"I know this sucks," he nodded with me until I stopped. "Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you will get everything back completely and your body just needs more time."

"Maybe ducks will start wearing tuxedos and throwing balls," I mumbled.

"And the world would be a better place if both of those came true," he scribbled on his pad. "Your commander will call you in to make arrangements with legal. I'm sure I will be getting calls like crazy, but you know I've waited as long as I could to decide this."

"I understand," I agreed.

"You don't seem surprised," he observed and stood, handing me my prescription slips as I stood.

"I could feel it," I nodded. "You don't get this," I motioned towards my cane and body and scars, "and expect to go back to work. Everyone has been telling me that I'd go back, that'd it'd be normal, but I just knew. I knew the moment I woke up in the hospital. But I let them tell me. And I let them pretend because it made them feel like they were helping. This isn't a surprise."

The doctor sized me up and nodded sympathetically.

"Now I get to retire before you," I tried to make him laugh. He had a serious, grandfatherly look that bothered my spine and shoulders. "And I won't have to make myself wake up early to go running."

"Just keep finding the positive," he held the door open for me. I scoffed slightly to myself and shook my head as I made my way back towards the waiting room. "I will see you in six months, okay? Unless anything comes up before that."

"You got it, Doc," I continued down the hall.

I didn't realize that I was gaining speed as I made it outside. I didn't realize that I'd forgotten my coat and the wind was kicking up like a tantrum. I kept walking though, quicker, yet more mindlessly and aimlessly. I was in a rush to get... exactly no where. I didn't have anywhere to really go and I didn't have really anything to do, now. As much as I hadn't believed I'd be returning to work, it'd been at least a distraction over the past few weeks. Now I didn't have that. I hadn't actually planned on all of that. I hadn't planned for what came next. The problem with the future being completely open is exactly that.

People gave me looks on the subway. Gave up their seat. One recognized me and sat beside me and told me how amazing I was. I laughed. I laughed as hard as I could. He shook my hand. And asked me about the trial and if I would testify or go or watch. I got off a stop early.

The streets were cold and angry and all that I heard was the resounding cacophony of downtown. The doctor's words flopped around between my ears in bits and pieces. They got lost between car honks and nudging shoulders with pedestrians bolting across the street. I checked my watch and waited for the sign to let me cross.

The science building was large and imposing. It grew larger and more violent the closer you got to it. I preferred the castle-like history building, or the quiet, tall humanities department. I sat on my bench, the on beneath the tree with bright red leaves which insisted on falling so early in the season. I watched students passing. They were my age, or at least close, and I felt so far away from them, with so many different worries. The girl balancing books with coffee, the guy smiling at his phone as he strutted next to another guy who was in the middle of a story, the bicyclers, the callers, the rushers to the bus, they all seemed like a me that I'd never thought about, and a me that never existed. Instead I'd lived a life and I was retiring. The word felt thick and like a mouthful of molasses. Retired at twenty five. I still had fifty years to fill up and no idea how to do it.

"Good afternoon, professor," I stood and greeted Holly as she came out in a gaggle of students. She smiled and the city wasn't so loud. It just throbbed around us on mute. "Hello, little students," I greeted them as politely as I could. Her undergraduates bothered me. They were so young and little. They looked like middle schoolers. And she looked... Sometimes I wonder who I once was, so that I was able to walk away from her. A girl like that comes around, and you just feel good. You're cliché and don't care.

"I thought I was meeting you at home," she kissed my cheek. My ears were cold. "Guys, you remember my girlfriend." A murmur of acknowledgements greeted me. "I will see you all on Thursday. Don't forget the quiz." I let her say goodbye for a moment. Sometimes I think she liked it, and sometimes I feel a bit guilty that she couldn't set foot back in that lab after her first day back. She said she saw my body there and the blood was stained into the tiles, despite the crisp whiteness that came with all linoleum. I told her she was insulting the janitorial staff. She told me to shove it and slammed the bedroom door before opening it again and tell me she wasn't going back. I shrugged and decided that was fair enough.

And now she was a visiting professor, soon to be a full professor in another semester. And I was retired. Now neither of us were going back to 15.

"You don't have your coat," she observed as we mechanically started to walk towards her apartment. She walked slower now for me, and I hated it. I'd rather her beat me home than have her milling about. But it was something I'd have to get used to, I suspected.

"I forgot it at the doctor's," I nodded.

"How was it?" she asked nervously. Sometimes I snapped at her. I shrugged.

"Okay. Same old. How was class?" She held my free hand, the one that didn't clasp that well.

"Good, really good," she began. "Some days I'm afraid I'm not teaching anything and I have no idea what I'm doing, and then some days, like today, things just feel really good, you know? And I kind of really like this new endeavor."

"Everything comes so easy for you," I sighed. I was in awe. I wasn't jealous so much as envious. She could roll with the punches. She taught Ali how to float like a butterfly. Hell, no gloves came close to her face at all. She looked at me as we walked. "I mean... You're very good at life and adapting."

"And you're..." she smiled and stalled. "Getting better at adapting to adapting." She laughed and I smiled and blushed despite the chilly wind that wove its way through the streets. She told me more about her day and I asked questions and we conversed for blocks in the descending night. I liked walking her home. It was a few minutes to be out in public and not feel exceptionally holey.

"We better hurry, or we'll be late for dinner," she reminded me as I slumped onto the couch. She put her bag on the chair and disappeared into the bedroom.

"Do we have to?" I asked as I rubbed my thigh. She stuck her head out and gave me a look. I sighed. "At least show me your boobs or something," I called. I heard a dim and pretend _Ha!_ from the bedroom. "Living with you was supposed to have perks."

"I swear, Peck," she came out, changed and shaking her head. I smiled while she moved around the kitchen. We were looking for a place that would be ours, but her apartment felt like home enough for me. I had pictures on the wall, and one whole shelf on the new bookshelf we had to get so I could have a shelf because she didn't have space. And my menus littered the fridge. And my clothes littered the floor. And a scrap of cloth was framed on the wall.

"Are you ready yet?" I asked as she stood by the door.

"I'm going to punch you," she gave me a sassy look.

"You can't punch a cripple," I told her as I stood and followed out again.

"No one would hold it against me," she reminded me. I gave up and she kissed me properly, lips and hair and shoulders and all before the door was locked. "That's better."

In less than twenty minutes we were due at casa Peck for the bi-weekly dinner, which somehow was established beyond my permission, yet I was not allowed to miss it because my mother was trying and blah blah. It meant that we bounced between both families and I liked Holly's better because her brother had video games and her nieces played with Transformers and board games and I liked those things. My mom had biting remarks and lumpy potatoes. But Holly's mom had those _when are you going to get married _eyes. Both were lethal. Both sucked. The board games tilted it though.

In nineteen minutes were were knocking on my mother's door.

"We should go, they probably didn't hear, or they aren't here," I shrugged the moment my knuckles touched the wood of the door.

"Hi, my little ones," my mother hugged us both before we entered. It was a new thing she'd been trying.

"We brought pie," Holly offered the thing we picked up from the grocery store.

"How thoughtful," my mother bit her tongue. I could see it brewing. I waited and she just took it and led us inside. "Honey, the girls are here!" she called to my father as we hung up our coats. He was in the living room, paper blocking him from us. He tilted it down to acknowledge our entrance and returned.

"Hey, guys, long time," Traci jumped up and hugged me. It was her first Peck dinner. She was shaking. Holly was just as nervous and this was well over her tenth. "Your mother told me she liked my hair, is that good or does she hate me?"

"Don't worry, if she hated it, you'd know," I shrugged and whispered. Her eyes grew big. "I'm kidding. She probably hates you, but you're probably the best that Steve could bring home, so she'll like you."

"I don't know if that is supposed to be a compliment or not," she knitted her brow.

"Exactly," I flopped on the chair beside my father. "Welcome to the ride."

Holly disappeared into the kitchen to try to help my mother. Steve sat and put his arm reassuringly around Traci, who still looked frightened.

"So, any good murders lately?" I asked, to break apart the tedium. My father tilted the paper again and gave me a look.

"Business is slow," Steve shrugged and drank. "The city is still a bit in awe of what happened last year."

"That's kind of polite, I guess."

"Crime has some decency," Traci offered. "We are looking into a drug ring though, bringing heroin in through Markham." My father grunted and flipped the page.

"How are you? What are you up to?"

"Oh, you know," I shrugged. "Cane shopping and squeezing tension balls all day. My forearm is steal, yet my grip is relaxed. Kind of a shame I'm gay now, I guess." Steve laughed and my father gave me a look again.

"You should come by and see everyone," Traci offered. "They miss you like crazy."

"I'm not really a fan of the building I got shot in," I sighed. "Weirdly enough. But I'll think about it." Holly was standing in the doorway and gave me a look.

"Someone is cranky," Steve pushed at me. I shook my head.

"I'm sorry," I shook my head. "It was a long day."

Luckily Holly had a personality that wasn't horrible and she got everyone talking, even my father folded the paper and watched us, smiling or nodding or shaking his head. I think it was the most interactive I'd seen him in a long time.

"This looks great, Mom," Steve offered, pulling out Traci's chair.

"Well, I can cook at least once a week," she laughed at herself a bit. She'd started watching the Food Network and printing recipes and trying to cook things we liked. I can't say she wasn't trying. I wanted to ask her if she went to my therapist or something. She probably did. Maybe it was me being shot. Maybe it was all of it.

"Maybe soon we'll have as many grandbabies as Holly's family has running around," she hinted shamelessly. My father was the only one who laughed at Steve and I's discomfort.

"Well, Mom," I started, leaning towards her. "I think I need to explain where babies come from, and how Holly and I can't really-"

"Gail, we get it!" she scolded me. Holly pinched my leg.

"Can't you behave for one dinner?" she whispered. She had pleading eyes. I took a deep breath and nodded.

Dinner passed with relative ease. Mostly thanks to Traci being fresh blood in the Peck shark tank. What wasn't to love? She ticked every check mark on the questionnaire. Good job? Detective, check. Law enforcement? Check. Capable of bearing children? Check, and check for already doing it. Pretty? Check. Polite? Check.

"Mom, that was really good," I tried as she started to gather the plates. "Let me," I stood.

"Aw, sit, Gail," she ushered me.

"I'm not useless," I reminded her, taking the stack and balancing it precariously.

"I know that," she tried to argue.

"Let the girl take it," my father spoke up, settling back into the chair and throwing his napkin on the table.

"I'll get the coffee and pie," she offered, following me despite me telling her not to.

Slowly, I placed the plates down and offered to help her with the dessert. She gave me the pie and told me to go. I gritted my teeth and returned with just that while she labored over more plates and made two trips for mugs and coffee. But I sighed and sat there. And Holly looked at me and smiled and she was pretty. Sometimes I wouldn't remember. But then I'd see her and I would feel a bit better.

"Now we worked really hard on this," Holly joked as she cut and dispersed the pieces.

"Stopping at the grocery store is harder than you'd think," Steve joked with her.

"I had my late class tonight," Holly sighed. "I totally planned on baking though, but I got held up with office hours, and then I had my first practice on the faculty rec league team, and they're dreadful."

"Now that I want to see," Traci laughed. "Professors on ice."

"When do games start?" my father asked. His first question directed at Holly ever. Everyone looked up at him.

"Um, next month," she nodded, taking a bite quickly.

"Hmm," he nodded.

"You're more than welcome to come," she offered. He smiled slightly and sipped his mug. I knew in that moment that she'd won. That I couldn't ever leave and I couldn't ever come to this house without her because they liked her more. I was okay with that. Hell, I was proud of it.

"Maybe I'll see how the admin team is. Lace up my skates," he ducked his head and looked at his pie. Steve and I exchanged glances. "If professors can do it..."

"We'll scrimmage," Holly offered.

My father finally had someone to talk to about things Steve and I found boring. Steve played basketball in high school. I played nothing. My father's hopes of passing on any legacy was squelched when we failed as Canadians and never embraced hockey. But I fulfilled it. He met my eyes and smiled with a slight nod.

"And softball?" Steve looked at me. We beat his team last year and he was sore. "Starts soon."

"Yup," I nodded.

"Aren't you going to try to play?" he pressed. "We've got you guys this year."

"I don't think..." I trailed off.

"Oh hell, you can still play," he shook his head.

"I don't think..." I tried again.

"What? Just smack the ball with your cane, or play catcher," he shrugged. "There's no reason you can't still play. It will be good, to move the joints around, right?" he looked around for support.

"It wouldn't hurt," my mother joined in.

"I do like your jerseys," Holly gave me a smile. I stared back at my plate and picked at the crust. "Plus, the doctors will probably clear you..."

"Definitely," my mother agreed.

"You have to be in the department," I said to my plate, not raising my eyes. They were talking around me still, planning my recovery still.

"I've seen you run," Steve offered. "You're nearly up there." He didn't know that after I tried to run I had to ice my leg and hip for a few hours and it hurt so badly I took the big painkillers I kept locked away.

"I can't play," I sighed, demolishing the pie into a mush pile slowly on my plate.

"They'll make room," my mother assured me.

"It's been recommended that I not return to active status and I am to be retired due to service-related injuries which make me physically incapable of performing the duties required of me," I recited slowly and with purpose, tasting each word in my mouth, breathing each vowel in deeply. "So no, I can't play. I technically am not part of the department anymore."

It was quiet, then. I drank some coffee and stared at the rim.

"They can't..." my mother was the first to start. I still didn't look up at her. I didn't want to see that look that she had that told me she didn't know what to do with me anymore.

"They can," I nodded. "And it's the right decision. What I've got is about as good as it's getting."

"You can still..." Steve tried. I met his eyes and he looked hopeful and searching. Traci had sympathetic eyes. I loved her for it. They weren't pity, and that's a fine line to walk sometimes.

"I agree with the doctor," I sighed. "I'm not fighting it."

"You can't give up," my mother interjected. She was getting agitated and bothered.

"I'm not giving up," I shook my head and laughed a bit. "I can't do it. This," I shifted the fork to my other hand. It rested there but wasn't held. "This is me, squeezing as hard as I can in this hand." I tried to use it and it came out easily. "This," I raised my arm just slightly. "Is as far as this goes. And this," I held up the cane. "I need this. Can't breach a building with it, can't ask someone to freeze and wait so I can put it down and pick up a weapon. This is it. What's wrong with that?" I looked at Holly and she was frozen and looking at her plate.

"Nothing's wrong with it," Steve offered after a moment of silence. My mother stood and left the room. "Nothing," he repeated again.

"You're retiring before me," my father observed before returning to eating his pie. "This isn't bad," he nodded. I laughed. I looked at Traci who laughed with me. Soon Steve joined, and it felt good. It was hopeless and it was terrifying.

"I never thought this would happen," Steve acknowledged. "I knew it might, but still."

"Yeah," I agreed.

I chanced a look at Holly, but she was composing herself. My mother never returned. We cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, said our goodbyes to my father, and all left at once.

"Mom took it about equal to what I expected," I said as we closed the door behind us.

"I actually expected worse," Steve realized.

"Worse is coming," I wagered. "Have a good night, guys."

We drove home through the city and Holly spoke about this or that. I watched the street lights flicker. She didn't betray the moment I watched her freeze. Not until we were safely home.

"You should have told me," she started while I sat on the edge of the bed and untied my shoes. I paused after one and watched her put her earrings in the box on her dresser. I liked watching her do that. When she looked in the mirror even though she knew where her ears were, and she watched herself take them out. I knew the noise each of them made when deposited back in their place.

I took off my other shoe and nodded.

"I didn't want to," I told the truth. Most of the time that got me in trouble, paradoxically what my therapist said would be avoided if I'd just ignored it.

"I know," she nodded and pulled up her hair. I liked watching her do that. It was absent. It was the moment she searched for something to wear to bed or walked into the bathroom. And I liked how her shoulders moved when she did it. There were millions of minutes I was in love with her habits. "You ambushed me."

My shirt went onto the floor and my pants soon followed. I massaged my thigh, weaving my fingers among the dots and scars.

"Seriously?" Holly returned and found my clothes on the floor.

"I'm sorry I ambushed you," I sighed.

"Hamper," she scolded me, throwing my clothes into the basket for me.

"That hamper is ugly," I retorted.

"This is big," she slipped on old shorts and threw her bra in the hamper.

"I know it's big, but I hate it. We don't need one-"

"Your work situation," she turned to me as a shirt fell over her head. "Not the stupid hamper."

"Right," I nodded. "I didn't want to think about it."

"Were you ever going to tell me?"

"Eventually," I decided. She shook her head. "That wasn't the right answer?" I got a small smile. "I'm sorry, okay? I would have told you."

She sat beside me on the edge of the bed. She fidgeted with her fingers.

"It'll be okay," she decided. "It will," she promised. I nodded. "You can find something else you love." I nodded even though I didn't believe her. "It sucks, a lot, but it will work out."

"Okay," I tried to believe her.

"You'll always be my hero," she sighed and held my hand. I watched her fingers between mine.

"Cheesy, Stewart. Too cheesy," I tried to laugh.

"I mean it." Her head moved to my shoulder.

"You know, I've always hated that I was a Peck and had to do what was expected of me, but now, nothing is expected of me, and I can do whatever I want, just like I always wanted... and I'm terrified."

"Yeah," she nodded.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"There's always the circus," she offered.

"Too much animal smell."

"Astronaut."

"_Gravity_."

"Sailor."

"Scurvy."

"Mathematician."

"Math."

"Race car driver."

"Don't know stick."

"Drug trafficker."

"That's the most promising."

"I support you."

"Okay then."

I kissed her head and I kissed her hand. And the wind scratched at the windows and whispered in the streets, while the lake was angry and bristling in the night. A siren disappeared into the heart of the city and it wailed between my ears and through my bones. I took a deep breath and ceased to exist. I let it out and existed again.


	3. Chapter 3

_and it's true what you said-  
that I live like a hermit in my own head. _

It was the dip in her spine that did it. And the spot on the corner of her shoulder blade. And the movement of muscle around her spine, the ridges there from cervical precipices tented in warm and taught skin. And the soft and short strands of hair that lazily laid on her neck that I traced only slightly when my fingers. It was even the way my forehead felt against her back, and my nose on her shoulder and my cheek on her skin. It was the hum that came from her chest when I slipped my hands in the elastic of her sweats, and the purr that slithered along her limbs when she stretched. I could spend an entire week just waking up for a few moments with her. I spent mornings waking up and christening my fingers in the lumbar stoup there, touching every inch.

Sundays were my favorite days. The week was filled with Holly's classes and office hours, and practice, and people asking to hang out and check on me. Friday was family dinner, bouncing back and forth between the two. Saturday we were here or there, pulled by this or that. But we'd crawl into bed Saturday night, potentially slightly inebriated, and I would sleep the best I got all week because there was no alarms on Sunday. There was nothing on Sunday. The locks stayed locks and the curtains staid shut, and the sheets stayed warm, and I loved it. I loved the calm that came. I loved how normal I felt. I didn't hobble around as much. I didn't brush my hair and I wore Holly's old practice shirts or shorts and I played games while she put her legs over my lap and read. And I could sometimes watch her eyes looking from word to word and her eyebrows constrict and breathe with the concentration. There was no phone and no internet and no nothing.

The day was blowing against the curtain. I could hear the snow in the air, never seeming to reach the ground, just accumulating in the most deadly way- gradually and without notice. The cold came in quiet and stealthy one night last week, much like a virus, much like a cancer, and planted itself like a homesteader at the heart of the city. I liked the cold sometimes.

Sometimes I woke up because I felt like there were bullets tearing through my bones and I couldn't breathe. Sometimes Holly whimpered in her sleep. Not to mention the fact that she quit her career. But we didn't talk about it. It suddenly became just... normal... just fact... that I was like this, and she was like that, and we didn't talk about the moment it happened, we just had what was left.

I thought about that on Sundays, on my back with the curtain flapping quietly above my head, and Holly next to me, head half-hid in the pillow. I thought about it all, really. I thought about Tuesdays and the park and the smell of bread from the bakery down the block before dawn. I thought about where I'd be if Holly hadn't been as stubborn as she was. I think I got to better part of it. She'd be still at her job. She wouldn't have laid on top of me and covered in blood and had to see my insides and any of that was enough to traumatize someone.

The human condition astounded me. Children grow up getting punched and become doctors or gas station attendants and they live for seeing their kids on the slide. People have accidents and keep driving. Dogs get trained to kill other dogs and they get found and loved and lick babies' faces. Houses get robbed and people still leave their keys under rocks. There's a constant state of being slapped by life, and humans just keep asking for more. The capacity for pain is off of the charts. And we always stand there, shaking our head, pious and humble saying we just can't take anymore, or we just can't imagine experiencing the pain someone else does, but then we do, and we just do it. It made me less inclined to hate everybody when I thought about it like that. When everyone is covered in scars, it makes them not so scary. Unique and personal, always, but at the same time, universal.

"Shit," Holly rolled over and sat up. "I have to go. I'm going to be late."

"It's Sunday," I reminded her.

"I know," she sat up, squinting and adjusting her eyes. I just laid there. I think I was the earth and she was the moon. I was slow and stationary, she was moving around me, despite me, because of me.

"It's our day," I reminded her.

"I know," she sighed, running her hand along her cheek. "I promised my sister I'd help Olly with her science fair thing. Mark is out of town and she's shit at numbers." I kept shaking my head while she spoke. "Okay, don't do that," she watched me. "Seriously. I'll be home before dinner." I shook back and forth. "Stop," she laughed, leaning over me. "Please?" Her nose hit my nose when I shook.

"This is the worst," I sighed and stopped. She pushed the hair from my eyes.

"You're right," she agreed. Her arms rested on my chest. "In the entire history of the world, this might be the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Hell, in the entire year, this moment might be the worst thing ever." She was pseudo-serious, which is worse than real-serious.

"What could you possibly be alluding to," I scolded her. "Because I actually don't remember much."

"Because you were sedated," she reminded me.

"Right," I nodded. "Which makes this the worst."

"You're not at all dramatic, are you?" her chin dug into my sternum.

"I like to live in extremes. What's the point if everything isn't the best or the worst thing that's ever happened?" I shrugged.

"Okay, so for now this is the worst thing?" she asked, eyes all puppy and horrible. I nodded. "I'm sure you'll survive."

"It's a curse."

She kissed my lips and pushed herself off of the bed. I watched her pull of her shirt, watched the sun slip through the crack in the curtain and make lines across her back between the blinds. If you've never been in love before it is hard to imagine being happier than in a moment you realize it. A moment like this. With this girl who helped her niece on the science fair project, who had the shoulders and hockey bruises, and the sweats that were too big and hung on her hips.

"I'm going to shower, why don't you go do laundry," she turned to me and pulled her hair out of the bun.

"Because I hate doing laundry," I reminded her.

"Thank you, baby," she smiled and disappeared.

I closed my eyes and gave into the feeling of Sunday in a warm bed. I wanted to tell my grandpa about my day, about who I was now, about what happened. He was actually the only person I wanted to talk to in this moment. I forgot about him so much, and then, it just came in a flash, one surge of remembering. Maybe because it was Sunday and I used to spend them at his house during school. Or because I hadn't thought about him in too long. I was due for it.

I heard the shower running and I knew Holly would be quick about it. I should have started the laundry but I just laid there and thought about all the things I'd tell my Grandpa if I could. Like how I liked playing softball, and his lessons throwing the ball around weren't lost. Or how I missed the quiet of his cabin in this city sometimes, but others there's a quiet you can find in busy streets that is unlike any other. Maybe I was curious if he'd like Holly. I think he would. My dad liked her. My mom liked her. My grandpa would like her for different reasons. Maybe for the same reasons I liked her, all those that my family couldn't understand. I could tell him about how she read me books I'd never heard of, and that was really nice. And I liked the books and I could talk about them.

"Hey, I'm heading out, okay?" Holly came in and closed the window. "I will think about crawling back in here all day," she sighed, looking at me still where she left me.

"You know I love you, right?" She paused, pensive and surprised. She nodded. "Okay."

"You'll do the laundry?"

"Yes," I promised.

"I'll bring home dinner." She didn't move. She just stood there looking at me. "So don't cook."

"Okay."

"We should really start to look for our own place," she decided. "Maybe you can start that."

"Okay."

"I love you," she leaned over and kissed my lips. I felt her fingers on my neck and cheek.

"Okay."

I sat up finally and watched her leave the bedroom. A few minutes later the front door closed. All was quiet and all was lonely. I was alright with that though. I gathered the sheets and the towels and the clothes and made a cup of coffee and headed to the laundry room. I sorted clothes and felt oddly domesticated and realizing that I needed to find something because I was going crazy here.

"Morning," I greeted the gentleman near the mailboxes.

"Morning, how are you?" he said absently, sorting through his large stack of envelopes. Ours was full of flyers I sorted with the detergent tucked under my arm.

"Can't complain," I murmured. "Hey, did you hear that?" I asked suddenly, hearing a muffled yell.

"That's good," he nodded. "I'll see you," he gave me a smile and departed while I looked out the window at the street. The low moan continued. The lobby was quiet and I was distracted by the noise. I left the detergent on the table and headed out into the cold.

The streets were slick with melting snow and the sky was a grey kind of bored. A car made its way down the street and turned, and quiet prevailed through the chain-link fence around the park across the street. I'd been afraid of losing it, but now I was hearing cries coming from no where. But as I turned to go back inside I heard it again, so real and lonely I couldn't imagine it being in my subconscious.

A lump laid in the middle of the street when I moved away from the building. The cold stuck to my ears and nose, attaching itself quickly and with purpose. I made my way carefully, avoiding the cars that came.

The bellowing was a dog, sad and bloody and shaking in the street. I stood back for a moment because it was the first time I'd seen blood in a while. It'd become almost foreign to me. The site of tragedy can become something you are unaccustomed to at times. Trauma can fade until it is like a movie you haven't watched in too long.

It was curled up and its throat was making guttural whines that made my heart hurt. It's leg was gashed open and its fur was matted. I looked around but the street was empty.

"Hey buddy," I moved forward a bit. It didn't move to bite me. It watched me all sad and scared. People and animals have that in common. At the moment of mortality realized, you find fear. A fear you never thought you'd ever feel. Probably the realest fear. That's what that dog looked at me with right there. Dirty and mangy and bloody as it was, it was standing on that almighty edge, clawing at the cliff and asking someone to try to pull it up. I wish it knew that I was in no way, shape, or form someone who could do that.

I rubbed its ear and rubbed under its chin. It was a mutt, that was sure. It looked like my grandpa's police dog though. Shepherd and husky, strong and underfed.

"Well fuck," I leaned over and looked at the leg. It's lungs were heaving. It wasn't a small dog. Maybe that's what saved it. Had it been any smaller it might have just been run over. Unfortunately that made it harder for me to do anything. "You're a little banged up, buddy," I realized. I wanted to go back inside. It shivered. I pulled off my sweatshirt and tied its legs together. That was what you did for people, so that had to work for a dog.

"Can I?" I asked, waiting as long as I could. I realized I was shivering too. I moved to pick it up. It whined. "What am I supposed to do? I don't have my phone."

I lifted the dog and it cried. It made me want to cry. That and the pain that shot through my leg and arm.

"Okay, stop making noise," I begged. "Please. I'm doing my best here," I adjusted and lifted. I left my cane in the middle of the road. "Don't die, okay?" It convulsed at times. I slowly waddled down the alley and onto the main road.

There was a vet office two blocks down on the main road. I took a step and another and another as fast as I could. I hurt and was very cold. But I hadn't been hit by a car.

"I need some help," I pounded on the door when I realized again that it was Sunday and the door was locked. I kicked as much as I could. The dog moved its head and tried to move its arms. I was sorry for that. "It's an emergency!" I yelled. "Hello!" I called again and again.

"We're closed," a voice hollered from above somewhere. I stood back on the sidewalk and looked over a few buildings to find someone's head sticking out of a window.

"This dog got hurt," I yelled.

"Hold on," the window shut. A few minutes later the door was opening. I followed the woman inside with no more words, and laid the dog on the sourly bleached table and stood against the wall. I watched her cut off my sweatshirt. It was bloody and gross anyway.

"What happened?" she asked, examining the leg with a gloved hand.

"I don't know," I shook my head. My thigh was throbbing, but I stood anyway. "I found it like this in the street. There was a good bit of blood."

"I'm going to have to do some things," she looked up at me as if looking to kick me out of the room. I looked at the dog and it looked at me. I just kept standing there. When she saw that I wasn't moving she told me to call her assistants. I used the phone in the exam room and did as I was told.

"You're a handsome fellow," the vet gave the dog shots. It finally laid on its side and gave up to the majesty of divine will. "What were you doing out in this weather?" It whined and whined and pulled its leg as she put in an IV. "This will help you feel better, handsome," she cooed. I held up the wall, scared of touching the creature that looked even more helpless than when I first saw it curled up in a dirty, bloody ball. "Why didn't you have him on a leash?"

"He's not mine," I told her. "I found him," I repeated. She looked at me then back at the dog.

"People are dicks," she said to it. "I'm really sorry."

"Can you help him?" I asked as she moved and worked and did what she could without help.

"We'll see what the x-rays say," she didn't even look at me. "If you want to go, that's alright." I looked at the dog real hard.

"Can I stay?" I ventured. She looked at me hard. "He doesn't have anyone else. I've been there, except I had people. It kind of helps." I took a step forward and rubbed its ear. It was thick and dirty, but I rubbed it between my fingers anyway.

"That's who you are," the vet smiled as she looked at me quite seriously. "The cop that got shot. You two are a pair then." The dog was panting, weak and weary. I felt bad for its sideways tongue and floppy tail.

"Can I call my girlfriend?" I asked, swallowing and staring at the animal. Maybe that was the worst kind of death to see. This dog hadn't hurt anyone, but someone couldn't even be bothered to see if it was okay. "I left my cell in my apartment."

"Yeah, of course," she went back to work, acknowledging that she made me self-conscious.

I left Holly a message as the tech came in. I sat quietly and let them work. I wondered if there was anything I should be doing, filling out forms, giving blood, I didn't know. It all felt ridiculous and surreal. I had wash to move around.

They were gone a few minutes later to the surgery room and I was left sitting in an empty room with the faint smell of wet, mangy dog lingering on the steel. I just sat there, though.

"Hello?" Holly's voice came a few hours later while my head was falling off of my palm.

"In here," I called, rubbing my cheek. "Hi," I greeted her.

"Hi, love," she grabbed my cheeks and made sure I was alright. "What happened?"

"I found a hurt dog," I shrugged. She sat beside me, dropping her bag and slipping out of her coat.

"You're all dirty," she observed, swatting at my arm and rubbing at the dried-up dirt.

"The dog was bleeding and dirty, so I carried it here," I told her.

"Seriously?" she asked. "That's amazing."

"I didn't move the wash to the dryers," I conceded.

"This is the most acceptable excuse," she laughed a bit. "Can we head home and change?"

"I want to wait for him," I told her.

Maybe this was what I loved most about Holly- Her completely ability to roll with whatever I needed. I needed to wait to see if a stray was alright for no reason at all, and she just sat, didn't bat an eye. I needed four months to figure out how to officially move into her apartment, and she never brought it up. I snap at her and scream at her and have to learn to walk again and she just keeps holding my hand. She didn't question my weirdness or diminish it or even actually say it was weirdness. She just made it normal. It'd been a long time since I'd felt at ease and at home in life, as if someone understood what I meant when I spoke. You can't tell someone that's why you love them though, it just doesn't translate. But here, in a vet's office, covered in grossness, Holly just was Holly and it fit me.

"How bad was it?" she asked, quiet and realizing I wasn't moving.

"He was pretty banged up," I explained.

We sat there quiet and uncomfortable. The seats in any waiting room are uncomfortable and horrible and akin to torture devices. But time ticked by and I wanted to eat because my stomach growled occasionally. I heard cats and dogs making noise under us.

"I didn't except you to still be here," the vet joined us eventually, wiping her hands in a towel.

"I didn't expect dog surgery to last so long," I retorted. Holly held my arm. That was a signal that I was being un-personable. I wasn't sure if she knew that she was doing it, but I recognized it sometimes. I acknowledged it even less.

"We had to take off the leg," she explained. "We spent a lot of time trying to save it, and then there was the ribs and hip. This guy needs a bit of rehab. Not to mention the mange and fleas and ticks and undernourishment."

"Can I see him?" I asked, standing finally.

"He's under still, we have a drip and a cast on him," she explained.

"Are you going to keep him here?" I asked. "I want him. I want him when he's ready to go home."

"Gail," Holly cleared her throat for a second.

"I do, I want him," I turned to him. "I'll pay the bill. I don't care."

"Gail," she said again.

"What? Just wait til you see him," I explained.

"We will keep him," the vet diffused it slightly. "You can take your time to figure out your plans."

"Okay," I agreed. "I'll be in tomorrow to check on him. Is there anything else I can do?"

"No," she shook her head. "You've done more than you had to already. We'll take it from here."

I followed Holly out into the evening after leaving my number at the desk and watching it put in the file for the new patient. Holly gave me her coat and let me lean on her arm a bit when we walked.

"Are you hungry?" she asked. I nodded and we ducked into the fish and chips shop on the corner of our street. We took our seats and I was suddenly tired. My leg still hurt, most of all. Tonight I would want to touch Holly in the best ways, but I would have to take a big pain killer. And I'd fall asleep mid-sentence on her.

"I leave you alone for a few hours," Holly started, smiling and shaking her head while she chewed on her straw. I smiled and folded the menu nervously. The store was empty except for workers.

"I was doing the laundry like you asked," I explained, hoping it would grant me a reprieve from ever having to do it again.

"Gail, listen, it's sweet, and what you did was very noble and important. But we don't have enough room for a dog," she sighed.

"Wait til he looks at you," I promised. "I saved his life. No one wanted him, and I found him and I saved him."

"You did, you did," she promised. "But we don't have room," she restated.

"We'll get a yard," I shrugged. "We have to look for a new house anyway. Just add a yard to the list." She stared at me hard and with those pity-eyes that haunted me sometimes. I felt like a child getting let down on their birthday when they asked for a bike and got roller blades.

"Where's your cane?" she asked.

"I don't even need it." She gave me stern eyes that made me afraid. "I lost it. I saved a dog's life."

"We can't just get a house and a dog. Thank you," she took her plate. "No, we're okay, thanks."

"Why not?"

"Because... it's just... I don't know," she picked at her plate. I was hungry but my teeth were uncooperative. "You don't have a job. I never know how you're going to be from one day to the next. That sounds like a lot of stress to put on everything. On us. We're just getting on our feet as it is."

"We've been doing this for what?" I asked, eating my fries and staring at them while I did. "Like over two years, right? and we always just roll with whatever happens."

"But these are things we plan on," she insisted. "We can't just jump in, head first."

"What if I get a job," I decided.

"That's not the point."

"You know, I got up this morning, and I wanted to stay in bed and I wanted to kiss up on you and I wanted to hang out and not leave the house, but I found a dog and he was sad and people abandoned him."

"Okay, don't do that," she pointed her fork at me. "Don't give me this 'I'm a puppy, he's a puppy, we're puppy savers' parallel fable." I laughed and shook my head a bit.

"You gave me a home," I finished, shrugging.

"Stop it," she tried again, hiding her smile. "Seriously."

"We're getting a puppy," I smiled, victorious.

"We don't know," she shook her head.

"What if that's what I want to do?" I asked, suddenly, realizing it.

"Get a puppy?"

"Yes, but also work with puppies," I realized. "I could do that. I could work with puppies and cats and iguanas."

"Iguanas...?"

"Whatever, you know what I mean," I shook my head.

"Are you serious?"

"Why not?"

"Let's look into it before we get ahead of ourselves."

"Alright, well we've figured it all out. House, job, puppy."

"Okay, can we seriously slow down?" Holly asked. "Let's do dinner first."

"No, I'm excited," I smiled.

"I leave you alone for a few hours..." she shook her head. "You know, it's not that easy. We can't just wake up and make all these decisions. We can't just expect everything to work out so we get a happy ending. There's hard parts."

"Tell that to our three-legged dog."


End file.
